Robert Barron: The Power of Prayer — Sunday Sermon

Peace be with you. Friends, as I record these words, we're going through a tough time in our country with outbreaks of violence, violence against politicians, against public commentators, even against school kids. It's just been a really rough season, and something else has come to the fore at this time, which is really bothering me. The tendency of some people in our public life to disparage prayer. So you'll hear this a lot now. When something tragic happens and people offer their prayers and the reaction is, "Ah, I've had it with thoughts and prayers. We have to act." Or, "Keep your thoughts and prayers. It's time for action." Even in some of these extreme cases, I think people of prayer being mocked as though prayer is just something completely ineffectual that we should leave behind in favor of action. Can I just say something? We're the first generation in recorded human history ever to feel this way. You go back as far as you can, and I mean across the cultures too, human beings have always believed in the power and efficacy of prayer. Look throughout American history, certainly. People pray at key moments of crisis or opportunity, good times and bad times, and they don't think prayer is just some kind of little ineffectual private exercise. No, they think prayer has an effect. If you had said to somebody prior to let's say 1975, so in the course of my lifetime, if you had said, "Prayer is a waste of time. Prayer is ineffectual," I think they would've looked at you like you're crazy. We're, as a secularized generation, the first one ever to hold this view. I think of that scene in It's A Wonderful Life, the movie that every one of us knows by heart, And there's toward the end of the movie and the narrator talks about the end of World War II and VE Day. Everybody wept and prayed. VJ Day, everybody wept and prayed. And it shows people in the church. Yeah, that's what people did. This is in the lifetime of my parents, certainly, is people spontaneously prayed because they felt God exists and God is an active agent in the affairs of human beings. God is not a distant abstraction or a distant force. God is an active agent in the life of the world. Now, where's this conviction come from? It's, as they say, been around forever. Well, it comes from the Bible. It comes from the Bible. You can't read the Bible, Old Testament or New, and come away with this weird deist idea or much less atheist idea that God either doesn't exist or doesn't care. No no no. The God of the Bible is a person who's active and who knows what's going on and involves himself in the affairs of the world and who draws from people these great cries of the heart that we call prayer. Pick up the Psalms, read any of the Psalms, and you find this very deep conviction. Something else. I just think of all the great figures in the Bible. Abraham Jacob, Joseph Moses Aaron Samuel, David Solomon Isaiah Jeremiah, Ruth David Peter, Paul, James, John, and of course Jesus himself. What do they all have in common? They all pray. They all pray. And they don't think it's an inefficacious exercise. They pray beckoning God to act, to act. If you had suggested to any of those figures, "Oh, prayer is a waste of time. We need to act," they would've looked at you like, are you out of your mind that your first instinct wouldn't be to call upon God? That's what's a waste of time. Now, the story, what triggered all this reaction to me was our first reading, which is one of my favorites from chapter 17 of the Book of Exodus. It's a time now when Israel escaped from Egypt and they're making their way toward the promised land. And they're beset by all sorts of difficulties on that famous journey. And one of them is they come across the Amalekites and the Amalekites are like classical enemies of Israel. They battle Israel at different points in the Old Testament. So we hear in those days, Amalek came and waged war against Israel. So what happened? Well, Moses says, "Joshua, get some people. Get some soldiers together and let's get in the battle." So they take action to be sure the Israelite army forms, and they go out in the field to meet Amalek. All right? But then we hear that Moses goes up on the hillside overlooking the field of the battle, and he holds out his arms in prayer. Now, what's he doing? Just a little private spiritual exercise. No, no, he's asking God. He's asking God to act. To act. And it says as long as his arms were raised in prayer, the battle went well for Israel. But then in this delicious detail, Moses' arms get tired, as they do pretty quickly when you're like this. And when he lowers his arms, he stops praying, the battle goes against Israel. So along come these two assistants, Aaron, his famous assistant, and a man named Hur, and they prop up his arms. And so he's able to keep praying, to keep praying. And then the battle is won. Okay. Prayer. What a waste of time. Oh, come on. Forget about prayer. We need action. Notice, first of all, everybody, there's not an either-or on display here. It's not as though it's one or the other. It's both. An army is formed and off they go into the field. But that army is sustained and supported by prayer because God is an efficacious actor in our affairs. The action, let's bring them together now, is taking place under the influence of prayer. God, working through secondary causes, to be sure, but God working, God working through those causes. Now, you say, "All right, all right, I guess I understand that. But how precisely does this work?" Well, my honest answer, after many years of living a Christian life and studying theology at the highest levels and teaching it, my honest answer is I don't really know. I don't perfectly or entirely know how this happens, that our prayer calls forth the activity of God. I can tell you what's not going on in prayer. It can't be the case that we're manipulating God through our prayer. Like, "Hey, don't worry about it. I got the magic formula. If I just say these magic words, God will act." No, no, that's not... That's disrespectful to God that I can compel God to act somehow against his will, or I can cajole or persuade him by my speech. That can't be right. Nor can it be right that by my prayer, I'm informing the omniscient God of what's going on. "So Lord, by the way, I don't know if you know this, but we're in a war with the Amalekites. It would be really useful if you could help us." "Oh yeah, thank you. I didn't realize that. So let me..." That can't be right. No no. God knows everything as it unfolds. God is omniscient. So prayer isn't that. So what is it? Well, maybe this is the best explanation. John of Damascus famously said that prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God. So anytime we pray, contemplative prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving, whatever, how we pray, we're raising the mind and heart to God. But when we're asking God to act or to intervene, what are we doing in that act is we are making ourselves a kind of channel of God's active energy. Is there a way we have of linking ourselves to this field of force that is the divine power? Remember that wonderful scene in the gospel when the man who is deaf and with the speech impediment comes and Jesus puts his fingers in his ears, almost like he's plugging himself in? And then he prays to the Father, and it's as though this electric current comes from the Father through the Son into this man. Well, that's an image I have sometimes. When we pray, when we pray, it's like we're plugging ourselves in to the source of energy, the source of power. And maybe the problem is we get so unused to prayer. We forget how to pray. We don't bother to pray, that we don't find this link to God. I wonder too, is this why the Bible is so insistent on persistence in prayer? Again and again, we're told Old Testament and New, is to persist in prayer. Keep at it. So you're asking God for something and it doesn't happen. Don't give up. Keep asking. It doesn't happen. Keep at it. It doesn't happen. Keep at it. Because no, we're not manipulating God. We can't think of it that way. God does what God wants. But is there something about the persistence of our prayer that finally Augustine said this, kind of opens, it expands the soul so as to receive what God wants to give? So that's a recommendation I have for everybody listening is when you pray, pray with perseverance, pray with persistence. Here's something else. It's related very much to this prayer action thing. Again, the people today that say, "Don't worry about prayer. Let's get to work." That's a really dangerous recommendation. You see why? Forget about prayer. Forget about your connection to God, who's the source of meaning and value and power and purpose. God who's the supreme good. Forget about all that and get to work. I guarantee you thereby, your work will be a disaster. Whatever you think you're accomplishing, it will not accomplish what you want because your action, oh, I'm a man of action, not prayer, but your action will be deformed because it's not informed by the highest good. So don't give me this leave prayer to one side and act. God protect me from actors who don't pray. You see what I'm driving at. God protect me from them. So Israel is actively involved fighting Amalek. But you bet Moses is praying. He's linking that activity to the purpose of the highest good. Let me just close with this, that beautiful image of Moses praying. So the great leader, the great high priest, but his arms are supported by these two relatively minor figures, Aaron and Hur. How's the church structured? Well, there's a fighting church. Think of all the people who are in an able-bodied way, involved directly in the great struggle to bring about the kingdom of God to battle evil. The gates of hell will not prevail against us. And yeah, we're in the front lines fighting the good fight. But then behind those who are in the front line are all the people who are praying. And here, I think of every mass offered, every liturgy of the hour is prayed by monks and priests and nuns. Think of all the prayer offered in a contemplative monastery. Beautiful. Without that, the action will not be efficacious. But then press it. Yeah, there's Moses, all these people of prayer, but who's supporting them? Who are Aaron and Hur? Well, think now all the people in the church who support the prayers, who builds and supports and finances monasteries, who provides the economic support for convents and for parishes, who supports the work of a parish enabling priests to say mass. All kinds of people who are holding up the arms of Moses as he prays so that the work of the church might succeed. Everybody, that's a much, much better picture of how prayer and action fit together. Don't believe these people today that want to drive a wedge between them or want to construe prayer as something hopeless and a waste of time. No no no. Keep this image in your mind. Our action in the world guided by the great power of God channeled through prayer. And God bless you.