This past week, a man related the story about his recent experience of a prayer group. It’s members had gathered to pray for the healing of a woman in their parish who was suffering from a debilitating disease.
Listening to them pray, the man observed, it seemed as if most of those praying for the woman’s healing were searching for words, apparently wanting to say just the right thing.
That’s a pretty common experience, isn’t it?
I’d suggest in those other folks have a “childish” faith evidencing itself in their almost formulaic words that were being filtered through their minds. Perhaps those folks were worrying more about what others would hear than expressing what genuinely was in their heart.
The fact is: Most Catholics don’t like to pray aloud. It happens to me all of the time because people think that a priest is a professional “pray—er.” So, whatever the event may be, someone asks, “Father, will you offer the prayer?”
Then, the man reported a young woman afflicted by Down’s Syndrome who offered her prayer for the woman’s healing:
I feel really, really sad that your hurt so much. I hope God heals you because we love you.
I’d suggest that in contrast to the other folks at that prayer group meeting, the young woman has a “childlike” faith, as Jesus taught, evidencing itself in words that emerged directly from her heart. Expressing trust in God and love of neighbor and not using her mind to filter what she believed and felt, this woman evidences what it means to pray “from the heart.”
Prayer oftentimes is described as having a “conversation” with God. Yet, the prayers of a childish faith are similar to the conversations crib Catholics have with important people in their lives. Filtering their words through their minds, crib Catholics speak not the truth but what they want others to hear and for the reason they want them to hear it, for example, to tell them what they want them to do and how they should do it. Not only do those words reveal nothing of what’s in their heart, those words oftentimes fall on deaf ears. And, as crib Catholics keep having these kinds of conversations, those relationships grow weaker and, sometimes, end. Why? Their words reveal neither truth nor love.
Many Catholics spend their entire lives living in the cozy and comfortable “crib” of a childish faith and wrapped in the swaddling clothes of formulaic words they call “prayer.” Yet, those words express nothing of what’s in their hearts. The truth be told, those prayers probably bore God to death.
An authentic “childlike” faith, takes its inspiration from the way Jesus prayed—a unfiltered conversation emerging from and giving voice the truth residing in the heart—revealing love of God and neighbor. Prayer from the heart shares with God one’s hopes and fears, tears and laughs, ups and downs, as well as one’s despairs and joys.
Scripture reminds us that Jesus frequently went away from the “madding crowd” to be alone so he could pray. Remember Jesus’ final prayer? That occurred after he went to be alone and pray—his “Agony in the Garden”—and, now a few hours later, affixed to the Cross—the first Crucifix—Jesus prayed for his executioners, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Looking around at all that’s wrong with the world—the evil infecting even the Church—it’s easy to blame “everything going to Hell in a hand basket” upon everyone else’s embrace of secularism and the loss of faith. But, as Jesus taught us from the Crucifix, those folks really don’t know what they’re doing because sin has blinded them. Today’s scripture reminds us that it’s those of us who have a childlike faith and have never really prayed who are in need of conversion, that is, to develop a more childlike faith that will prepare us, as it prepared Jesus, to be a “light to the nations.”
That represents our challenge this second Sunday of Ordinary Time in this “Year of Grace 2021”: To take time each day to get away from the “madding crowd” and to have some real, good, authentic conversations with God. Don’t filter the words through your mind but speak the truth. Don’t say what you think God wants to hear but the truth.
Developing that authentic childlike faith—taking its inspiration from the way Jesus prayed—I can infallibly guarantee you one thing: You won’t bore God to death. The measure of your growth as an authentic Catholic will be the degree to which you’ve embraced the Crucifix of Good Friday, not remaining behind in the crib of Christmas Day, and to the point that you pray for all of those who have hurt your, caused you to suffer, and treat you like you’d be better off having never been born: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
When that truth emerges from your heart, you’ve learned to pray as Jesus taught.
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