“Man Praying” Vincent Van Gogh (1883)
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And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:
“And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
May He within Himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?” (emphasis added)
(From Morte d’Arthur, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1883-1884),
Tennyson wrote this poem literally about the passing of King Arthur (and the Round Table) and its impact on his devoted friend, Bedivere, and, perhaps, figuratively about the death of Tennyson’s close friend, Arthur Hallam and the impact of that loss on the poet.
Do our prayers for ourselves and others make a difference? King Arthur thought so. But it’s one thing to pray for the souls of those departed, to hopefully usher them into the Kingdom of Heaven; but it’s another thing to pray about a situation in which we are deeply involved. In the first situation, we cannot know (and may never know) the results of those prayers; so we hope but don’t experience any of the results. However, in the second scenario, we experience the results: joy or sorrow, without knowing if either outcome resulted from our prayers.
Many of us know people who have stopped praying and others who stopped believing in God, because they did not receive the desired results from their prayers. They either neglected a relationship that probably began in childhood, or they never had one. Thus, their only prayer life consisted of occasional or rare “911” calls to God for real or imagined emergencies, and they therefore hadn’t developed and cultivated a strong relationship with him. How much would I do for someone I do not know? We must have that relationship.
As we seek God, he draws us nearer to him as indicated by the entire covenantal theme of Sacred Scripture:
- “For you bless the righteous, O Lord…” (Ps 5:13)
- “When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me…” (Jer 29:13-14)
- “He calls his own sheep by name, and they follow him.” (Jn 10:3)
- “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” (Jn 17:3)
- “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Mt 7:7)
- “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” (Psalm 90:17)
But we have to reasonably ask what exactly God means in those words. I did, as my marriage continued to crumble and my many prayers to save and rebuild it seemed to go unanswered, I sometimes changed my prayer to “Are you there, God? If you are, then do you even care?” Many have asked those same questions over the centuries, and each echoes the psalms of lamentation. However, despite the forlorn content of those songs, their existence and the thin thread of hope found in them indicate continued belief in God by the psalmist–however uncertain–and that he still cares.
Many of us have familiarity with Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd…” However, we should also know the poem that precedes it, to appreciate the plea David made to God :
My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?
Why so far from my call for help,
from my cries of anguish?
My God, I call by day, but You do not answer;
by night, but I have no relief.
In You our fathers trusted;
they trusted and You rescued them…
To You they cried out and they escaped;
in You they trusted and were not disappointed…
The last several lines imply that belief and hope remain, despite the near-desperation that runs throughout most of the poem.
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A former bookkeeper of mine returned to the faith in the hope that God would answer his prayer: “Lord, I have returned to the church, and will continue doing so if you cure me of my cancer!” So he negotiated with God to get his cure, or so it seemed. Turned out that “cure” lasted only a few years, and to his Maker he went. He played it safe, as if he had placed his bet in accordance with Pascal’s Wager. But what do we do for our part in the relationship?
Several years ago I attended a worship service at a small pentecostal church in a nearby town, because my dear friend’s father would be the guest preacher, and when we arrived at the traditional “prayer offering,” virtually every prayer pertained to the health of either the worshiper or a loved one:
“Please cure my wife of diabetes!”
“Please heal me of my heart disease!”
During these fervent pleas for health, I couldn’t miss the irony of hearing them while looking at the food offering tables in front of all the rows of pews, each one groaning under the weight of cakes, pies, pastries and more, all of which would soon find their way down the hatch of those who had just prayed for health. Healing in light of that behavior would truly smack of the miraculous, because of the suspension of the natural law. It seems to me that their expectation of healing while living that way insults the very Creator from whom they–just moments ago–solicited help.
Speaking of health: Does it make sense to pray for others who, for example, have a serious illness? Some studies have shown benefits, both when people know others pray for them and even when they don’t know about those prayers. It seems an even split. When in doubt? Pascal’s Wager…
In my experience working as a hospital chaplain, some patients rejected my offer to pray with them, sometimes abruptly, so I decided I would pray for them. As my friend, Jim Mulvihill, has often said, “God will sort it out.” When I first began this work, the head chaplain asked me to review the many little cards chaplains hand out to patients and determine which ones I would use. Out of a few dozen, I chose only one. Each of them had a pious platitude printed on it, phrases I don’t generally find helpful in the situations of serious illness or death of loved ones. They remind me of too many sympathy cards. I preferred to either have a conversation with patients or remain silent, as I accompany them along their difficult journey.
Preachers exhort their congregants to pray for success, health, love or money; but they actually want them to pay for the hope of riches, with seed money they plant in the preachers’ baskets, on the promise that something fruitful will grow in their lives–but which rarely does. When those “blessings” don’t materialize, the preachers urge them to pray harder and have stronger faith. Not a bad gig: the preacher buys a mansion that grew from those “seeds” donated by the faithful, donations made because of promises of future blessings, but then blame the victims’ lack of faith when those blessings don’t materialize. To add insult to injury, the preachers share a complicit role in this dubious endeavor, by playing auctioneer to the “bids” offered by their congregants to win God’s favor and win the prize. So, the motivation doesn’t stem from charity toward the “other” but for themselves.
Does God have favorites? Who and What does God say he favors in Sacred Scripture? God favors everyone because he created everyone out of his love for us and he made everyone in his image and likeness. So, we all start as equals. But the disorder in the universal order that resulted from The Fall required God to administer justice, to restore that order to the cosmic order and to the order of humanity. So often, it seems, the justice we seek for others’ offenses against us does not occur in our lifetime. Do we therefore suffer in vain? Let’s look at some who suffered, and decide if their suffering amounted to nothing:
- Adam
- Eve
- Noah
- Abraham
- Jeremiah
- David
- Mary
- Jesus
- Peter, Paul & all the Apostles
- Nuns of Compiegne
- Mother Teresa
In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches us who God favors.
In the Acts of the Apostles, we learn of their confidence in God’s favor, “…rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name…” (Acts 5:41)
All those mentioned above and millions throughout history have found favor with God. All opened themselves to God, assenting to his existence, committing to doing his will, deciding to love him and trusting that he will manifest his love in graces for his “favorites.”
Historians continue to disagree about the existence of King Arthur. So, in case he did and remains in Purgatory, I will pray that my prayer enables him to pass through the Gates of St Peter, and then to prayer for me and my family!
God bless us
Tom
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