Prayer...

I found the discussion on the efficacy of prayer very thought provoking and I started this post in response but it became too long and personal and I didn't finish it or post it at the time. The discussion made me really analyse what I do in prayer and why I do it. Do I believe, really believe, that there is any real benefit to praying?

Life experience in a hospital ward...

As I have said in an earlier take, in my young nurses' training days I use to pray for many of my patients' recovery from terminal illness and of course the prayers weren't answered. It always seemed they were the "nice" people, but as I have matured I have discovered that most people when faced with their mortality become "nicer" people. Anyway my prayers were not answered in the way "I" wanted which was for them (my patients) to get up and walk out of hospital to continue their lives with their loved ones. But I now trust that in some way my prayers were of some benefit to the person, whether it was in their acceptance of their state, peace, or even comfort for the family. Perhaps my praying for them just made me a little more aware of them and their needs and I was a better nurse to them. I hope so. I trust so. I believe this in hindsight but at the time, because my prayers weren't answered in the way I had asked for them to be, I didn't believe they had been answered at all. God wasn't listening and as Brian has stated God didn't hear me or care! If God didn't care then what was the point? I gave praying to God a miss after a while, but not for long.

Marrying a non-Catholic...

After the miracle of finding the man I love (a non-Catholic) and marriage in the Church, then the miracle of our first baby, I found I needed God in my life more than I realised and I started to go back to Sunday Mass. The first day I did this the Gospel was the story of the Prodigal and I knew God was speaking just to me. I heard what I so desperately needed to hear in the Word for the first time in my life! It was like an arrow aimed straight at my heart. I knew that God still loved me and that I was forgiven. I went to confession for the first time in many years and it just happened to be on Holy Thursday … the traditional day of penitents "coming back" into the Church. I didn't know this at the time. The priest in that confessional was unknown to me and apparently only a visitor to that parish over Easter, and it was a long confession!!! For my penance he told me that I was to go to Mass that night (obviously HE knew that was when Penitents were meant to be received back). I had never been to a Holy Thursday liturgy. The priest also told me that I would bring my husband into the church one day. My husband very occasionally did come to Mass with the children and me but I didn't believe THAT for one minute and totally dismissed it. My husband wasn't the "religious" type and it wasn't something that we ever talked about much and I certainly wouldn't have pushed religion on him although he came from a Church of Christ family background he had never been baptised as they only believe in adult baptism. I remembered this priest's words 7 years later when my husband told me one night after dinner that he was going out. I was really surprised! He wasn't a bloke who went to the pub or anything like that and this was the first I knew of his going anywhere. So I asked "where are you going?" He said "I'm not telling you." It was all very mysterious, but he had a silly grin on his face so I thought it was some surprise or something he was teeing up. When he came home he told me he had seen an RCIA Enquiry night advertised in the Parish Bulletin and that's where he had gone and he was going to become a Catholic. He loved the whole RCIA process and as most adult converts embraced his new religion wholeheartedly.

A son diagnosed with possible Leukaemia...

One day, before my husband's conversion, I found myself in a difficult position with one of our children who was sick and possibly had leukaemia and BOY did I pray! We had to keep him away from everyone for a week as he had no resistance to infection whilst we waited to have another blood test done. We had a choice, wait a week (I didn't know seven days could be so long) or put a 2-year-old through hospitalisation and bone marrow biopsies. Did I ever beg God! In the midst of fear and begging I heard God speak to me. The first time ever! It wasn't an audible voice. I didn't so much as hear it in my head but in my heart. And God said … "you love your son this much, how much do you think I love you to have given my son to you!" Then as I drove home one day through that very painful week I was again worrying, praying and crying and the words from the Mass "lift up your hearts" came to me. My immediate reaction was to look up, and as I did, there was the most beautiful, perfect rainbow above me and I KNEW that everything was going to be OK. The rainbow being a very personal sign, for me from God, that God keeps promises. Peace descended on me in the most amazing way. Of course the next blood test my son had was a huge improvement and the first result was ascribed to a reaction to a particularly nasty Paro virus.

Prayers of praise and gratitude...

My main prayers though as my children grew up weren't so much ones of petition for an outcome but prayers of praise and gratitude that God is Emmanuel. I remember when my family were young and I use to hang the washing on the line "praying the washing". Each little sock brought a prayer of thanks for a child that could run around and get their socks dirty and the ones in the world who couldn't. Each sheet a thank you, that although we didn't have much we had warm, comfortable beds and a roof over our heads and for those that didn't have such things. Food stains on clothes that didn't wash out and needed a bit more attention caused gratitude that we had enough to eat and remembered the many in our world who were hungry. Even our work uniforms, as hard as going to work was, were a reason to thank God that we had professions and jobs to go to for so many didn't in those days.

The act of praying, if nothing else, does change me!

Needless to say, I have had many times when I have prayed and the results have not been knowable. However, I still trust, because the act of praying, if nothing else, does change me. Other times my prayers HAVE been answered in the most unexpected and "impossible" ways. If I were to go into details this take would go on forever. Obviously prayers for peace in our world haven't done a bloody thing in achieving the outcome we would want, when we want it, but I do believe they have an effect, and praying for such has made me aware of trying, in anyway I can, to work for justice as we know and JPll said, "there can be NO peace without justice", and in the process to try and change me first of all. I can't expect God to do it if I won't can I?

Some real value in lighting a candle...

As a little girl I would grieve at Mass when 'they' LOCKED Jesus in the tabernacle. I actually felt sad that he was in there all alone like a prisoner and I would whisper as I left "I'll come back and visit you". As I have said before I never knew that God was anywhere but in church during my childhood religious formation. I did this throughout all my primary school years visiting Jesus in the tabernacle on my way to and from school. It was always a great joy to have a penny (it's now a dollar … talk about inflation! And in our church they aren't even real candles anymore, because they cause the wall to get blackened! We have electric candles … pffft) to light a candle for some special intention. We were taught that while ever that candle burned your prayer was going "up" to God. To this day I still light candles in my home nearly everyday for some one or some thing. I no longer believe that the candle impresses God at all, but every time I walk past the burning candle, smell it and see its light I remember the person or the reason I am praying. It reminds me too that Christ is my light, is right here, right now, not even a whisper away … always ready to hear what I have to say even though God knows what is in my heart without my having to speak it.

But what I don't believe in...

Like many other cradle Catholics of my era, and like Cindy the Sacristan, I made many first Fridays, Novenas etc. I've nursed a lot of people who have done the same and I can assure you they are not always afforded the blessing of a priest at their death. Priests are hard to come by these days and to get one to a hospital especially at night can, more often than not, be impossible. So I no longer believe in such things. I don't think God counts up and keeps tally of how many times we went to a First Friday mass, or how many days in a row we said a certain prayer before even considering hearing us.

And now its getting real daggy...

When, in the very early days of the CathNews discussion board, I first met Brian Coyne in cyberspace, we started a friendly, although not that frequent, email correspondence. It was at my instigation thinking that this man could help me think through some of my issues with the church and my faith at the time. Once he confided in me some of his woes and I answered that I would pray for him. He said thanks but not to bother, that he didn't believe in such prayer. I said that was OK I'd still pray for him. I don't know Brian, seems that a lot of "God Incidences" have happened to you since then. Seems God can dream for you much bigger than you could ever dream for yourself and I think slowly you are learning that with your "spiritual" guide who does believe in God Incidences.

Seeing "miracles" all the time...

I think it is also the equivalent of believing in miracles. If you believe in them you see them all the time. As Milly signs her posts "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

So yes I do believe in the efficacy of prayer (and miracles) and the Eucharist as the greatest prayer ever prayed. Prayer has some very positive things going for it even if its only effect is that it changes me. I can still do with a lot of changing!

KateD

Photo Credits:

1. Praying silhouette. Image provided by Kate
2. Rainbow image supplied by Kate originally sourced from stock.xchng.

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