As we begin enumerating prayers let us remember the reasons for them!

As we begin enumerating prayers let us remember the reasons for them!

There are many events that enter our lives that only prayer can accomplish a response of hope.  Let us begin by placing these activities according to the depth of their seriousness that affects those closest to us.  Some may consider putting ourselves on a lower level instead of finding a quick resolve for ourselves as an insidious solution.  If we are always seeking a solution to what confronts our well-being while others may suffer worse conditions than us, it is our charitable requirement from God to offer assistance to them, first.  It’s not as though we shouldn’t address problems for our own well-being, but we were not ordained as individuals to be self-seeking by ignoring the more serious convictions of health or other complications of our neighbors.  

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”   (Jn 15: 13).  A command that will place any of us in the path of violence or removal of our freedoms and place us in the path of harm.  Do we need an example of how one or more persons have done this for even a stranger?  Go to Auschwitz where a priest, St. Maximilian Kolbe took the place of a family man and suffered the eventual death that this man would live.

Theologically, the Incarnation is the task that Christ took upon himself that would lead him to Calvary to save you and me.  The very meaning that Jesus spoke of in the verse above.  “No greater love than this..”

Our stance of sacrifice goes much further than personal injury or death.  Making a stand in front of abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood or demanding that Roe vs Wade never be made rule of this nation anymore.  Announcing by writing, preaching, or even protesting in many ways the evils regarding the right to life is not ours as much as God’s mandate.  These are the perfect example of what true love is all about.

So it is with the life of one who sees the tragedies around him and forgets his own failures so as to reach out to even one neighbor worse off than himself.  This becomes humility and covers a multitude of personal sin when our one grace-filled effort finds and cures the evil of allowing the weak to become like trash in the street.

Prayer is the very essence of what and who God is and is always reaching into the proud circumstances that may place any one of us in a put-down entity towards others.   We are reminded of the Pharisee and the Publican who both went to the temple to pray.  A man of God, so it appears that he was, and a tax-collector who usually was not considered holy, both standing before God.  One filled with pride and the other with humility.  (Lk 18: 9 - 14).  This is the very obstacle any of us could face if our prayers are mis-directed.

Ralph B. Hathaway