“Indeed the Psalms teach how to pray. In them, the word of God becomes a word of prayer — and they are the words of the inspired Psalmist — which also becomes the word of the person who prays the Psalms.” (from General Audience, 22 June 2011, Pope Benedict XVI)

Nineteen years ago I walked through the doors of St. Patrick Seminary to begin my formation to the priesthood. One of the items we were asked to bring with us was the “Liturgy of the Hours” which is also known sometimes as “The Psalter” and as a book is called the Breviary. It was a daunting set of four books with ribbons and numbered weeks, with saint days and special prayers and the instructions were a bizarre set of words that left me ever confused as I looked at them.
The joy of the Liturgy of the Hours over the past nineteen years as I have learned (and continue to learn) the rhythm and the words of the Psalms is that, as Pope Benedict points out in the above quote, to pray in the Word of God and with the Word of God in these inspired prayers.
The Liturgy of the Hours is also called the “prayer of the Church” and while all priests, deacons and consecrated religious women and men are obligated to pray the hours daily the Catholic Church also invites all members to join in this wonderful and beautiful prayer.
“Since they are a word of God, anyone who prays the Psalms speaks to God using the very words that God has given to us, addresses him with the words that he himself has given us. So it is that in praying the Psalms we learn to pray. They are a school of prayer.”(Benedict XVI) Learning to speak the words God has given us is like all learning we do in family, school and life. At times the task at hand may seem boring and fruitless and at other times difficult and almost impossible but we discover the fruits and the possibilities in the learning repetition where our mind and body conform themselves to the thoughts and actions shared.
This is why prayer is always fruitful in the end…it forms us into the image of God and we then begin not simply to parrot the words spoken but become living witnesses very Word of God, Jesus Christ, is the center of our actions, our thoughts and our dreams in life. Prayer is the point where we speak and act in the way of God. We are able to do this because we begin to experience the true presence of God in all aspects of our lives. God, Our Father, isn’t a distant and alien presence rather he is intimately present in all moments of our lives and especially through the gift of Jesus Christ. In the Book of Psalms, which makes up the majority of the Liturgy of the Hours, we enter into the conversations of life that animate our relationship with God. As Pope Benedict notes, “In the Psalms are expressed and interwoven with joy and suffering, the longing for God and the perception of our own unworthiness, happiness and the feeling of abandonment, trust in God and sorrowful loneliness, fullness of life and fear of death. The whole reality of the believer converges in these prayers. (Pope Benedict XVI)
This is the ultimate fruitfulness of prayer—not that we somehow change God’s mind or bribe him into an action—it is how prayer conforms us to God in serving and caring for one another. The vow to pray the Liturgy of the Hours is a vow to allow our lives to be molded to the life of Jesus Christ. It is what obedience to prayer finally does—it makes us anew.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“By teaching us to pray, the Psalms teach us that even in desolation, even in sorrow, God’s presence endures, it is a source of wonder and of solace; we can weep, implore, intercede and complain, but in the awareness that we are walking toward the light, where praise can be definitive.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

“Christians, therefore, in praying the Psalms pray to the Father in Christ and with Christ, assuming those hymns in a new perspective which has in the paschal mystery the ultimate key to its interpretation. The horizon of the person praying thus opens to unexpected realities, every Psalm acquires a new light in Christ and the Psalter can shine out in its full infinite richness.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

“Worship of an idol, instead of opening the human heart to Otherness, to a liberating relationship that permits the person to emerge from the narrow space of his own selfishness to enter the dimensions of love and of reciprocal giving, shuts the person into the exclusive and desperate circle of self-seeking. And the deception is such that in worshipping an idol people find themselves forced to extreme actions, in the vain attempt to subject it to their own will. For this reason the prophets of Baal went so far as to hurt themselves, to wound their bodies, in a dramatically ironic action: in order to get an answer, a sign of life out of their god, they covered themselves with blood, symbolically covering themselves with death.” (Pope Benedict XVI from General Audience, 15 June 2011)

As we continue to talk about the importance of prayer through the eyes of Pope Benedict XVI, he presents to us the Prophet Elijah and his confrontation with the prophets of Baal and what this confrontation teaches us about faith and the blessing of religious practices as a necessary part of the ongoing conversation of the individual and of society at large. The Prophet Elijah in a prayer of supplication seeks a union with God that will help him lead others into the blessing of a relationship with Divine love.
As we continue to struggle to comprehend the continued aftermath of the tragedies of violence and how we are to respond in prayerful action, our invitation to seek God’s peace and justice is the antidote to the quick fixes which very seldom lead to the full unity of the Body of Christ.
“In spite of claiming to follow the Lord, an invisible and mysterious God, the people were also seeking security in a comprehensible and predictable god from whom they believed they could obtain fruitfulness and prosperity in exchange for sacrifices. Israel was capitulating to the seduction of idolatry, the continuous temptation of believers, deluding itself that it could “serve two masters” (cf. Mt 6:24; Lk 16:13) and facilitate the impracticable routes of faith in the Almighty even by putting its faith in a powerless god, fashioned by men.” (Benedict XVI) Like the people of Israel we, as followers of Jesus Christ, can be seduced into desiring a God who acts according to our whims and is easily controlled by the bribes of promised actions if only the right results come from the giant vending machine we have deposited our coin of prayer into. This quickly falls apart because God in our desire to make him in our image quickly becomes dispensable as we move to the next “god” who will satisfy our next desire.
In this we know the ‘gods’ we begin to create are unable to unify because each of us will have a different ideal of who our god should be and we must then destroy all other gods which means we must destroy those who hold up their gods that contradict our personal god. It is the evil of separation and isolation from community that we see too often in our modern society.
Pope Benedict reminds us of the need for the ideal and absolute that is outside our small and limited social constructs that constrict the true freedoms of actions and love. “The believer must respond to the Absolute of God with an absolute, total love that binds his whole life, his strength, his heart. And it was for the very heart of his people that the prophet, with his prayers, was imploring conversion: “that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back” (1 Kings 18:37). Elijah, with his intercession, asked of God what God himself wanted to do, to show himself in all his mercy, faithful to his reality as the Lord of life who forgives, converts and transforms.” (Benedict XVI)
Becoming a true “intercessor” as I wrote about last week, is to enter into a deep, full and prayer-filled relationship with God. It is not a sleepy inactive relationship but rather one of vibrant and full actions…but actions with the purpose of love and unity in God. Pope Benedict reiterates the three basic goods of prayer and why it becomes not just necessary but vital to our relationships with God and all people we meet. It is to seek the one true God to know and to worship him, to discover the conversion of heart that brings us into true and fruitful relationship with God and others and finally to see in the embrace of the cross of Jesus Christ is to embrace the peace and to embrace all in this gift of healing, reconciliation and mercy.
Let us continue to pray for healing, peace and reconciliation as we go forth and do the work in the image and love of Jesus Christ.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

Israel could no longer have doubts; divine mercy came to meet its weakness, its doubts, its lack of faith. Now Baal, a vain idol, was vanquished, and the people which had seemed to be lost, rediscovered the path of truth and rediscovered itself. (Pope Benedict XVI)

Once the work of salvation has been begun it must be brought to completion; were God to let his people perish, this might be interpreted as a sign of God’s inability to bring the project of salvation to completion. God cannot allow this: he is the good Lord who saves, the guarantor of life, he is the God of mercy and forgiveness, of deliverance from sin that kills.(from the General Audience, Pope Benedict XVI, 1 June 2011)

These past few weeks with the acts of violence and death that have permeated the news headlines we once more heard the refrain, “We need more than prayers and good thoughts.” to help solve the numerous acts of violence. And as I wrote earlier and as I will write today this is very true: we do need more than “just” prayers and good thoughts but…if we do not ground our actions in our relationship with God then the human will with it’s brokenness and fallen state will only produce more violence, hatred and evil in trying to solve the newest epidemic of sin.
As we continue to look at Pope Benedict XVI talks on prayer we come to the his reflection on intercessory prayer in using the example of Moses as a man of prayer. He notes that throughout the story of Moses we hear certain phrases over and over again: “Moses asked the Lord…he interceded for the people…he prayed…he addressed the Lord….he saw and spoke “to him face to face, as a man speaks to a friend.” (Pope Benedict XVI) What we come to see and understand is that in his prayer Moses was active with God and his people. He didn’t sit back and just wait but rather he interceded for them actively and forcefully but always after he prayerfully listened and spoke with God.
Prayer is the active listening of emptying our hearts of the rancor and division to seek the unity of God. One of the traditional ways, we as Catholics, empty our hearts is in fasting (yes, fasting is not just for Lent on Fridays). “By fasting Moses showed that he was awaiting the gift of the divine Law as a source of life: this Law reveals God’s will and nourishes the human heart, bringing men and women to enter into a covenant with the Most High, who is the source of life, who is life itself.” (Benedict XVI) We often want to jump into the “doing of something” in the immediate aftermath of some act of sin to “fix the problem” but as we hear Moses awaited the gift of Divine guidance trusting in God’s will in the life of the community, not tolerating the sin, but rather seeking a way of unity…even unity with those who most egregiously sinned against the community and drew many into the same act of sin.
Moses in prayer, as our example, reminds us of our need to seek the divine mystery in our lives and in the life of the community because there can be, “This is a constant temptation on the journey of faith: to avoid the divine mystery by constructing a comprehensible god who corresponds with one’s own plans, one’s own projects.”(Benedict XVI) As a Catholic Church we are called to stand up against hatred, bigotry and violence but also seeking healing, reconciliation and sanctity in our interactions with all people. We are not a faith seeking to “cancel people” because of sin, we are a faith seeking to renew people in the face of mercy, the mercy which the only source can be Jesus Christ. The active prayer of intercession is anchored to mercy, “The prayer of intercession is permeated by love of the brethren and love of God, they are inseparable. Moses, the intercessor, is the man torn between two loves that overlap in prayer in a single desire for good…(where he, like us)…wanting what God wanted, the intercessor entered more and more deeply into knowledge of the Lord and of his mercy, and became capable of a love that extended even to the total gift of himself. With prayer, wanting what God wanted, the intercessor entered more and more deeply into knowledge of the Lord and of his mercy, and became capable of a love that extended even to the total gift of himself.” (Pope Benedict XVI) We must become this intercessor.
The only way we will truly find healing and holiness is when we ground each and every action in Jesus Christ and allow his love, his mercy, his forgiveness to be the first actions in our lives. It is not the easy what of knee-jerk reaction seeking to amputate the other from our community but rather the long path of healing, often more painful but ultimately restores the wholeness to the Body of Christ. Let us therefore begin with our intercessory prayer for peace and healing and go out as true disciples seeking to be sisters and brothers, true intercessors, to all we encounter on our mission of life.
God bless
Fr. Mark

This is God’s salvation which involves mercy, but at the same time also the denunciation of the truth of the sin, of the evil that exists, so that the sinner, having recognized and rejected his sin, may let God forgive and transform him. In this way prayers of intercession make active in the corrupt reality of sinful man divine mercy which finds a voice in the entreaty of the person praying and is made present through him wherever there is a need for salvation. (Pope Benedict XVI)

I think we should meditate upon this reality. Christ stands before God and is praying for me. His prayer on the Cross is contemporary with all human beings, contemporary with me. He prays for me, he suffered and suffers for me, he identified himself with me, taking our body and the human soul. And he asks us to enter this identity of his, making ourselves one body, one spirit with him because from the summit of the Cross he brought not new laws, tablets of stone, but himself, his Body and his Blood, as the New Covenant. (Pope Benedict XVI)

“Dear brothers and sisters, our entire lives are like this long night of struggle and prayer, spent in desiring and asking for God’s blessing, which cannot be grabbed or won through our own strength but must be received with humility from him as a gratuitous gift that ultimately allows us to recognize the Lord’s face. And when this happens, our entire reality changes; we receive a new name and God’s blessing.” (Pope Benedict XVI, from the General Audience, 25 May 2011)

For my part, I would rather prayer not be a long night of struggle as Pope Benedict suggested in his General Audience several years ago. I have been rereading these talks this past month as I renew my commitment to prayer and take time on reflecting on how prayer informs my life and the life of all Christians. Pope Benedict takes the life of Jacob and more importantly the days of travel and struggle as he returns with his family to his home from which he fled after deceiving his father Isaac to receive the blessing of inheritance. Pope Benedict reminds us that in this night of struggle where Jacob the
“Patriarch reveals his true identity as a deceiver, the one who supplants; however the other, who is God, transforms this negative reality into something positive: Jacob the deceiver becomes Israel, he is given a new name as a sign of a new identity.” (Pope Benedict XVI)
When I pray and think about this struggle and transformation, this new identity God offers to us in prayer, I begin to understand why the struggle is necessary. We, too often like Jacob, wish to hide and minimize the sin that is in our lives. We don’t want to acknowledge the pain sin cause to each of us and those around us. We would rather focus on the soft and gentle God and not deal with the harder and more demanding God who calls us into a transformation of life where we find the true peace and joy in the struggle. And of course God does not wish us to be defeated in the struggle but rather persevere in the long night of the struggle where we contend with the vices that have infected our soul and seek to be strengthened by the grace received through the intimate wrestling with God to grow in holiness and virtue.
“Prayer requires trust, nearness, almost a hand-to-hand contact that is symbolic not of a God who is an enemy, an adversary, but a Lord of blessing who always remains mysterious, who seems beyond reach. Therefore the author of the Sacred text uses the symbol of the struggle, which implies a strength of spirit, perseverance, tenacity in obtaining what is desired. And if the object of one’s desire is a relationship with God, his blessing and love, then the struggle cannot fail but ends in that self-giving to God, in recognition of one’s own weakness, which is overcome only by giving oneself over into God’s merciful hands.” (Pope Benedict XVI)
This is the sacramental reality of our Catholic faith and something I see played out again and again in marriage in my ministry in Worldwide Marriage Encounter. When husband and wife choose to enter into the nearness of trust where true and intimate conversations occur then prayer occurs and where prayer occurs then life is grown in abundance and nurtured in hope; spiritually, emotionally, physically and sexually. The struggle, the wrestling of life becomes a greater self-giving to the other through the grace celebrated, given and received. This occurs in all relationships as we seek the “hand-to-hand” contact of relationship becoming sacramental signs of love in the world as brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, true sons and daughters of the living God.
God’s invitation to each of us is to enter the battle, come into His presence with our lives and give our lives to God’s merciful love. See you at Mass.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“Whoever allows himself to be blessed by God, who abandons himself to God, who permits himself to be transformed by God, renders a blessing to the world. May the Lord help us to fight the good fight of the faith (cf. 1 Tim 6:12; 2 Tim 4:7) and to ask, in prayer, for his blessing, that he may renew us in the expectation of beholding his Face.” (Pope Benedict XVI)