Saturday, April 4 - Holy Saturday

One of my favorite poems is called “Prayer” by George Herbert, a 17th Century English poet and Anglican Priest. It starts off,

           Prayer the churches Banquet, Angels age, 

           God’s breath in man returning to his birth, 

           The Soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

And in that 14 line poem, 27 different images of prayer are given. Indeed prayer is a banquet where we feast on God’s gifts as we take in God’s spirit inside us as we breathe deeply of the life of a different dimension rather than the surface plodding through each day. When I breathe in to prepare for prayer, I am bringing in the breath that God spoke in the creation of the world, the same breath that Jesus gives back to God on the cross, the same breath that He breathed on the disciples after His resurrection. These 27 different images give the freedom to not worry about the “how” I pray, but the openness and honesty in which I pray. Margaret Guenther, an Episcopal Priest and Spiritual Director and author says that the word “pray” is so similar to the word “play” because “it stretches us and helps us push out the boundaries.”

There is no grading system on prayer and sometimes it is only one word. Guenther in her book The Practice of Prayer, which is part of the Episcopal Church’s Teaching Series, shares a poster that was given to her before she went to seminary:

A prayer to be said 

when the world has gotten you down 

and you feel rotten 

and you’re too doggone tired to pray 

and you are in a big hurry 

and besides you are mad at every body

HELP! 

Prayer is at least 27 images and sometimes only one word.

Tom Wilson

Friday, April 3 - Good Friday

For me, and as I believe for many, prayer has evolved throughout my life. At first it was a special time to share with my Dad teaching me the Lord’s Prayer; and moved into a bargaining tool in my teens. Then prayer became a learning or enlightening part of my life. Over time prayer has offered peace, solace, and sometimes acted as a sound board for my anger. For me prayer has allowed me to become closer to God. To have a well-­rounded and sometimes not so happy relationship with God and to see and understand the wonder of God. Prayer has opened my eyes over time to the joys and sorrows of God.

During Lent it is especially the joys and sorrows that I reflect on. The sorrow of God giving up his only Son for us because a group of people that were afraid of Him and His works. The sorrow that to this day there are many people who are still afraid or still feel threatened. The joy of new life in the resurrection and new life in nature that has been hidden all winter long. The joy of knowing that I am loved and that God knows I am far from perfect, yet He forgives me. Lent is the time that I ponder most on all of our sorrows and losses and rejoice in the joy of new life and new beginnings for those who have gone before us with God. Every day I rejoice in the simplicity of where we live, my friends and my family. Every day I become closer to God through all of this and in my prayers.  

Jennifer Adams

Thursday, April 2 - Maundy Thursday

“One of you men who has eaten with me from this dish will betray me.” (Matthew 26: 23)

During Lent I reflect on experiences throughout the past year and how my readings and lessons from the Bible help me through those experiences. The season is devoted to fasting, abstinence, and penitence in commemoration of Christ's fasting in the wilderness, and as we look towards the Easter season Betrayal is center stage.

Betrayal is a loss of trust; betrayal is hurtful and is caused by ego and selfishness. Betrayal can be between you and God; it can be between parents and children, husbands and wives, it can be between friends. Often betrayal is private and not out in the open for the world to see. However, betrayal is most egregious when people we hold in positions of leadership and public trust betray the very people who empower the leaders. In today’s world we are experiencing betrayal by those we put into Public Service and this is very much in the open, much like Jesus at the end. Those in Public Service and leadership in Public Service must hold the support of the people sacred. To betray that Trust is to tear down the very essence of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness declared in our Constitution. Now we have people given the Public Trust ruling and dictating rather than governing and leading, tearing at the very fabric of our Christian lives in a country founded under God.

So let us pray for lost souls. 

Warren Judge

Wednesday, April 1

I Pray to the God in Whom I Believe

Prayer of Petition has always presented peculiar problems to the theologians because of the confluence of seemingly contradictory elements resulting in paradoxical situations. Moreover, to the ordinary believer, the question of unanswered prayers presents a problem that turns off many people from prayer altogether. Emily Dickinson’s cry, “Of course - I Prayed - And did God Care?” echoes the sentiments of millions whose orisons have gone unanswered.

But there is more. Given that God is absolutely powerful, absolutely knowing, absolutely good, absolutely provident, what can prayer effect, if anything at all? How can we influence the will of God by our petitions? If we could, would this not make us more powerful than God? And if we did not, what is the use of praying? Is not God’s providence to be fulfilled regardless of our intentions and impetrations?

St. Thomas Aquinas answers that we petition only to obtain from God what God has arranged or planned to happen on condition that we pray. Alonso Rodríguez, a Spanish master of the spiritual life, agrees, writing that “What God, in His divine providence and disposition has determined from all eternity to give to us, He gives in time through the instrumentality of prayer.”

But we are free, and God, in His providence, must take into account (through His absolute knowledge) that we may or may not pray for the things he has designed to be obtained by prayer, or that we may pray for their opposite, or not pray at all. But providence must be fulfilled regardless and, as Fosdick explains, often in total disregard of our prayers. So prayer always implies the proviso, “If God has planned for this to be.”

God’s mind is not changed, nor are His plans, yet prayer is efficacious when it observes the condition of abiding by the absolute will of God. God, says Fosdick, “does not remake His world for the asking, not because He cannot, but because He must not.”

But the confluence of the necessity of providence, of human freedom of choice, and of human desires and aspirations remains paradoxical regardless of the many theological efforts to explain it - and there have been many, and very elaborate ones, through the centuries.

Recently I heard a gentleman confess on TV that a particular event that was being discussed was “a miracle.” Why so? He answered fervently, “Because I believe in the power of prayer.”

Which means that he believes in a God whose almighty power is at the service of every human request; that is, a God who is not almighty, since He is subject to the power of prayer, a God who is not all-merciful, since He is partial to some, not others; a God who is like a magician, ready to perform an astonishing trick on demand. Saying “I believe in the power of prayer” with great conviction is not a sign of piety, as the gentleman thought, but of a pitiful if petulant ignorance.

I believe in a kind and loving God, a fair and just God, an all-powerful God, an all-knowing God, a provident God, and an unfathomable God. To this God I pray, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

Ignacio L. Götz