How often have you been asked by someone to pray for something or someone? As a follow up, how often have you expressed your sympathy or regret at someone’s difficulty by saying that you will pray for them?

 

The question can be asked because all too often the request or promise of prayers is more of a social nicety than a request based in faith. With good will but no deeper conviction, the promise of prayers gives one a way to show support and solidarity, even when it seems we can do nothing more to help.

 

As a result, it leaves us asking if we ever follow up on the prayers we have promised. We can wonder as well whether the ones assuring us of their prayers will do so.

 

The question of the promise of prayers is significant because for us in faith, we believe that prayer is real. It has power and effects beyond what we can know.

 

Most fundamentally, prayer is contact and conversation with God. Our personal and loving Father, in His infinite love and greatness that has created and keeps in being with the whole universe and every human person, does hear our prayer. 

 

Prayer by its nature joins us to God. Any thought or time that we give to prayer is an opening of our soul to be filled by God, often in ways different and greater than we can imagine.

 

When we offer prayers of petition, asking God for what we need or hope or desire, that opening to God is transformed and broadened. We are acknowledging God’s greatness and power to provide what we lack and cannot provide or achieve for ourselves. 

 

Further, we have Jesus’s own words to His followers, “Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.” (Mk 11:24). We recognize that in saying this Jesus does not give us an easy solution to our problems in prayers of petition. But we enter into the same trusting relationship to the Father that led Jesus to the sorrow of the cross followed by the glory of His resurrection.

 

In short, prayer is fundamental to us as human beings, and certainly to our Catholic faith.

 

In our day, when society and the world seem to be in such dire straits, I would offer some intentions for our prayers that perhaps don’t get enough attention.

 

First, pray for peace in the world. We should especially pray for peace in Ukraine, for peace and conversion in Russia which has invaded Ukraine. 

 

We should pray for peace in the Middle East where our fellow Christians are suffering through the ebb and flow of the tensions between the Arabs and the Israelis that are often in the news.

 

We should pray for peace and justice in Myanmar which has long suffered under oppression. With our own Burmese community here in Rockford, we can join them in solidarity.

 

We might recall as well, the need for peace in Nicaragua and Venezuela as well as throughout Africa. There again, along with people in general, the Church in particular suffers when violence breaks out.

 

Why such a list of foreign places to be the objects of our prayers? Because what has been entrusted to us, with the knowledge of and faith in Jesus Christ and with His presence in the Eucharist, is to be a heart of prayer for the world. The power and the knowledge of prayer has been given to us. So too has the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we might be moved to imitate Christ in the Gospels who often withdrew to pray to His Heavenly Father.

 

Let’s make sure that our promise of prayers is real and is heartfelt. It is an important and daily part of faith.