Redemptorist Preacher

Esther 14:1-14, Psalm 138, Matthew 7:7-12

I had a really good debate with a confrere of mine about the effectiveness of intercessory prayer.

He was praying for the sun to shine on the day his ordination. I suggested that God probably had other concerns then the weather. Yes I can be a jerk sometimes.

I don’t know how God deals with prayers like that, the mundane and not so mundane things that people throw up to God and hope for a reply, but in the Gospel today Jesus in very clear. “Ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened”. Seems rather black and white despite the fact that many people still wonder whether God has heard their prayer or not.

In the first reading, which is paired very well with the theme of the Gospel, we find beautiful Queen Esther praying to God. Esther was a Jewish maiden who was claimed by a Persian King to be his wife. Esther hears that there is a plot by the king’s subordinate to massacre her people and she knows that she must intervene; but how?

Esther prays to God for the right words to say and the courage to be able to say them well. It seems God heard her pray since not only did the king not smite the Jewish people but he killed the conspirator instead and let the Jewish people have a day of reckless revenge amoung those who persecuted them. A feast day recounting the slaughter exists to this day.

I don’t know that prayer is like a telephone line to God, but I do believe it is a connection of some type. In offering our hopes and our desires to God it first of all helps to make them real for us. If we are praying for someone we love it certainly helps to put that hope “out there” rather then sitting with it all by ourselves.

The difficulty is that the answers to our prayers do not always come in the shape that we had hoped for. Jesus uses the example of God responding to our prayers like a parent looking out for a child but sometimes a child’s demands and a parent’s response don’t exactly correlate. What is consistent however is that what the child receives from a good parent is always given out of love.

So maybe it does rain on that special day, maybe what you are hoping for doesn’t come to fruition. Even so I think a good prayer life, a consistent “connection” with God opens us up to being able to accept with gratitude whatever it is that God wants to send our way.

I knew a good priest who was ill with cancer. He made a pilgrimage to the shrine at Lourdes, France believing with all his heart that God would hear his prayer and cure him of his illness. After he returned home he was beaming and at peace with the world. When the doctor confirmed that his cancer was still active and that he didn’t have long to live people were surprised; but he reassured them, “I didn’t get a cure, but I got a healing”. He had received the peace of heart to live life fully despite his illness and, because of his peaceful attitude, he was thought of as a saint by everyone that he came into contact with until the day he died.

God does hear our prayers, what is yours?

Who will you pray for today?