#PrayForTheWorld

It has become harder and harder to keep track of the places to #prayfor with so much violence occurring all over the world within a short period of time. Most of us realize that posting such hashtags can do only so much for world peace.

Just as futile too is the exercise of complaining about why some places get hashtags while others do not. While, indeed, it is important to cultivate a universal outlook, I believe what one thinks, says, and does offline are better indicators of the universality of one’s outlook than his or her Facebook statuses.

Nevertheless, I would not dismiss such hashtags as serving no purpose. God can draw good out of evil. He uses these events to remind us that we are vulnerable and that we need Him. As C.S. Lewis put it, pain is a megaphone that God uses to rouse a deaf world.

We tend to be smug in our self-sufficiency that it takes tragedies to remind us of the need to pray. In fact, sometimes even these tragedies do not motivate us to pray. The hashtag appeals to pray for this or that other country that just suffered a terrorist attack remind us that we can, in fact, ask a loving Father for protection and consolation for ourselves and others as we live in this dangerous world.

But what does it mean to pray? To pray is to talk to God, but also to listen to Him. As we pray for those who live in countries distant from our own, we should also ask God what the events there mean to us personally. More importantly, we must listen to His answer. Perhaps through these events He is calling us – in ways specific to every individual — to a closer relationship with Him, to be better persons, to reach out more to our neighbors. In other words, could He be using these events to call us to conversion? Could He be using these events to motivate us more to aspire for sainthood?

After all, as St. Josemaria Escriva wrote, “The world’s crises are crises of saints.”  In other words, what’s wrong with the world is that there are not enough people striving for sanctity. To cite St. Josemaria Escriva again, he wrote that Christians should “drown evil in an abundance of good.”

If asked, I cannot explain how doing small good deeds to one’s neighbors can defeat terrorists. But such efforts have far reaching benefits that only God can see.

Yes, we should pray for the world. Such prayer should include asking God, “What do you want me to do?”, and bravely listening for the answer.

Cristina Montes

Cristina Montes

Cristina Montes, from the Philippines, is a lawyer, writer, amateur astronomer, a gardening enthusiast, a voracious reader, a karate brown belter, an avid traveler, and a lover of birds, fish, rabbits, and horses. She is a die-hard Lord of the Rings fan who reads the entire trilogy once a year. She is the eldest daughter in a large, happy Catholic family.

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8 thoughts on “#PrayForTheWorld”

  1. The Catholic Church teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church at 2741, “Jesus also prays for us – in our place and on our behalf. All our petitions were gathered up, once for all, in his cry on the Cross and, in his Resurrection, heard by the Father. This is why he never ceases to intercede for us with the Father.32 If our prayer is resolutely united with that of Jesus, in trust and boldness as children, we obtain all that we ask in his name, even more than any particular thing: the Holy Spirit himself, who contains all gifts.”
    The Church also teaches that Jesus prays for all sinners, at all points of space and time, all at once. Therefore, should we not all strive to resolutely unite our prayer with the prayer of Jesus, for all sinners at all points of space and time, all at once, and ask that Jesus pray His prayer in us, for us, with us, through us the way Mary must have at the foot of the cross and throughout the whole thirty three years of Her worshipping Her Son, Her God? And in uniting our prayer with the prayer of Jesus in this way, we can unite with His eternal will to honor Joseph and Mary the way He does eternally in the ever present tense in His one single, infinite, eternal thought in which He wills everything all at once.

    1. Like files on a hard drive may be, the CCC has corrupted data and 2741
      is a case in point. Jesus (God) does not pray to Himself. And you wonder why protestants and other Christian sects teach that the Trinity is fabricated.
      This fuels their belief that Jesus is not the 2nd Person of One God.

      1. James, I do not understand how you can personally conclude that Jesus does not pray (to Himself): In the Bible, John 17:20, we have, “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through….”. Who was Jesus praying to if not God, to each person of the Blessed Trinity?
        When Jesus was a little boy; Did He follow the perfect example of Mary and pray with her, honoring St. Joseph as the head of the family, or did Jesus set a bad example by not being seen praying with His mother and honoring His Father?
        If God only wills one, single, infinite willing of everything He wills eternally in the present tense, Is God eternally willing for Jesus to honor St. Joseph as the head of the family, or has God changed His mind?

      2. doug, i remember well during my 12 years of parochial education how the religious steared us away from John’s gospel not only for its complexity (Revelations) but for the style and manner in which it was written in. The chapter you referenced is not only very, very long and repetitive but not set down in a way that a person would talk. Written about 70 years after Jesus’ death it has modern bible scholars thinking that it had been edited several times. The crux of my conclusion comes from the logic that since God knows all things and those who will be saved,He needn’t pray for those who will be saved and it would do no good to pray for those He knows will not be saved. Once again, Jesus is praying to Himself for something that He knows is a forgone conclusion. We pray to God and saints for intercession. These prayers are passed on and known directly by God and at no time would it be necessary to set up a prayer loop that includes God. The CCC’s simplistic interpretation has all the earmarks of a pyramid scheme and was conceived at a time when theological speculation was never edited for faith, reason or intellect.

      3. James, thank you for continuing the discussion. I read “pray” as interceding as the CCC says, “This is why he never ceases to intercede for us with the Father.” He applies the infinite merits of His suffering and death for our sins. We technically have no real merits for our “good works” as if we had given God anything. We are all sinners and do not deserve, cannot deserve on our own, heaven. But Jesus is merciful and wants us to throw ourselves on His mercy and His merits through His NAME.
        I am curious as to your answer to the other two questions I asked:
        When Jesus was a little boy; Did He follow the perfect example of Mary and pray with her, honoring St. Joseph as the head of the family, or did Jesus set a bad example by not being seen praying with His mother and honoring His Father?
        If God only wills one, single, infinite willing of everything He wills eternally in the present tense, Is God eternally willing for Jesus to honor St. Joseph as the head of the family, or has God changed His mind?

      4. ” Intercede ” works for me.
        1. I don’t know if it was the Jewish custom for boys / men to
        pray with women. Friday night prayers might have been a
        segregated service.
        2. The question is too complicated for me to reply.

      5. James; the fact that John appears a little disconnected could be answered by the opinion that John was close to 90 years old when he wrote down this summary of the Last Supper where he sat next to Jesus.
        Do you accept 2 Cor. 5:19 as being true in that “God was in Christ reconciling all things”?
        Do you believe God is infinitely good and powerful enough to create freewill such that when God gives someone truly infinite graces, they will still have true free will and they will freely choose to do God’s will because of His infinite graces (help)?
        As to your statement, “These prayers are passed on and known directly by God and at no time would it be necessary to set up a prayer loop that includes God.” I never said it was necessary. I look at it as a gift from God and part and parcel with His gift of creating us and His being the infinite perfection of the 4 th commandment whereby He truly and perfectly honors Joseph and Mary.
        Do you agree that Jesus was the perfect embodiment of the fourth commandment and that He perfectly honored Joseph and Mary by everything He did?

      6. ” Do you agree that Jesus was the perfect embodiment of the fourth commandment and that He perfectly honored Joseph and Mary by everything He did? ”

        He wasn’t such a nice Kid to make them go out of their mind
        with worry when He took off. He was like any other Kid, knowing that if He asked they would have said ” Not now, Honey, wait till you get a little older to start hanging out in the temple alone. I’m done, doug,it’s been nice dialoguing.

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