I NOTICE that the number of people requesting prayers for their deceased relatives and friends in November declined.
This is a general observation that I make as a priest committed to praying for the community entrusted to me. It has no particular reference to Greythorn. I have observed that the request for prayers is less. However, one does notice that more people seek quiet private prayer in the Church. This is a positive observation. But it does raise the whole question of prayer and how important it is in the Christian life.
Jesus prayed. He sought places for prayer and his life decisions were marked by a desire to pray. I am, like many of you, a part of a society in which quiet, silence and reflection are more difficult to find; where our space is invaded by devices, distraction and preoccupations. But it seems appropriate to reassert the need for prayer in the Christian life.
As Catholics we have a long tradition of prayer and contemplation. Religious communities are dedicated to the practice of prayer and some to an exclusive life of prayer and solitude. I have been fortunate enough to share something of this experience in the Benedictine, Cistercian, Carmelite and hermitage experience.
One witnesses, from the outside, evidence of people taken into an experience of God that is clearly transcendent and transformative for people. But what of our own life of prayer? It seems that there are questions people have about prayer.
I suppose that the first question is whether our prayer changes/influences God and the short answer must be that it does not. God and his love are already with us and for us and supporting us. While there are many ways in which people have tried to express the reality of God, none seems to validly include a God who is, in any way, manipulated by human supplication or entreaty.
OK, well then why should we pray for a desirable outcome concerning the hiccups in human life? Why pray for the sick, the safety of travellers or the eternal rest of those who have died?
The short answer would seem to be because, a God who is love, wants only the good of human beings. Our prayer unites us, in spirit, in prayer, to the determination of God (God’s will) that human beings be promoted in every good way possible to the goodness and happiness for which they were created. In other words, prayer unites us to God in our shared desire and will that we want human well-being above all else.
The next question is more difficult and has preoccupied philosophers and theologians, namely, why does God tolerate all the evil that affects every aspect of our human journey? The illness, unwarranted suffering and natural catastrophes that mitigate against human flourishing and happiness?
This is traditionally the study of Theodicy or God’s perplexing relationship with the world. Short of saying that “I do not know” – an admission that we can easily make when confronted by the mystery of God – I would suggest that God shares our protest towards all such suffering and tragedies but that the freedom of the creation is such that even God has rendered himself powerless towards such evil.
In other words, when prayer unites us, with the God of love, in favour of human well-being, it also unites us against the suffering and evil that we confront, personally and globally. This is the universal protest implied in any prayer for a better world.
The last reflection that I offer with regard to prayer is that our prayer, which unites us with God’s love, and against all human and global suffering, is the prayer that moves every Christian to a deep animation; a life of amazing engagement with the story of God’s love and vigorous opposition to suffering of every kind. It is a prayer that is essential to the life of a Christian united to God and opposed to evil. This is the defining practice at the heart of a lively faith in God.