Prayer as Action: Uniting Faith and Effort

And so the misunderstanding that we can maybe pull from this is that prayer is somehow either A, changing God's mind, like we're somehow now, bullying God into submission by our constant prayers, like for somehow that God has made a decision, and our constant pestering is him going, oh, okay, never mind, we'll just kind of switch that up for you. Or that we are making God aware of something that he isn't already aware of, because he's the omniscient God of the universe. He knows, all knows more than we ever will. We can't be going to him and saying, hey, I don't think you're aware of the situation in my life and we need to make you aware of this. [00:03:01] (45 seconds)  #GodKnowsAllPrayers

So if prayer is really neither of those things, then what is it? And I think if we look back to our first reading with Moses and the Amaleks, we can begin to see that what Moses is doing is he's uniting the action to the heavenly father and drawing from him. And we can see that as long as he's praying, his arms are, extended to heaven, and he's uniting that action to our Lord, to the heavenly father, the Israelites are succeeding in their battle. But the second he wavers, he lowers his arms, he stops uniting that action to God above, they begin to waver in the fight as well. [00:03:46] (53 seconds)  #MosesPrayerInspiresAction

And so when we go to prayer, we are opening our own hearts, opening our own minds, to what God desires to do in us and bringing to him whatever we are planning on doing, whatever action we plan to do, and uniting that to him, for him to do with as he pleases. He might strengthen that action, or he might say, we need to do something different. And that's the hard thing to let go of, to say, Lord, this is something I desire to do, and him to say, well, that's, you're desiring the wrong thing. There's a better thing here. [00:04:40] (42 seconds)  #PrayerEmpowersAction

But it's that uniting to the father, uniting that action, uniting ourselves to him in that prayer, that actually brings about the efficacy that we want to see, that brings about the results that we want to see. Because it's only through Moses' prayer that the Israelites succeed against the forces of Amalek. Without Moses' prayer, that fight would have been done pretty quickly, and they would have lost badly. [00:05:22] (30 seconds)  #PrayerChangesUs

And it's a similar situation for us. If we desire to only act without praying, only desire to act without uniting ourselves to the source of all goodness, the source of all wisdom, the source of all power, then whatever we're planning on doing will be unefficacious, will be, for all intents and purposes, useless. It will not bring about any real change or result in our lives or in the world. [00:05:53] (29 seconds)  #MassAsPrayerSource

I want to bring about a new understanding of not prayer versus action, but prayer as action. We see very clearly in the first reading that Moses is acting, raising his arms and petitioning to our father. So is it with us. So whatever is going on in our lives, whatever we desire, whatever we need, to go to the father and to petition, to ask him, to unite ourselves to him, and to be persistent in it. [00:06:23] (41 seconds)  #LearningToPray

And so if we desire to make what we do efficacious, then we should draw from the source and summit. We should go to the Lord in the Eucharist and ask him, Lord, how can I take on your vision? How can I take on your will? How can I go into the world and do what you desire me to do? Lord, how can I receive what you desire to give me? And it's coming to that altar, coming to that font of all wisdom, that we can begin to receive that. [00:08:49] (44 seconds)

And to never believe that that prayer is useless in the face of action. That if I'm praying and not acting, then I'm wasting my time. No, you're not. No, we're not. [00:10:01] (17 seconds)

The mass is a sense that portal of grace from our Lord's own salvific act. The graces of salvation being made presently. In time. Maybe the same with the prayers of those religious, those contemplatives, or just those Christians throughout the world. Without them, we would be like the Israelites fighting the Amaleks without Moses. Would be losing badly. [00:10:40] (30 seconds)

``And so we must understand that prayer is action. And if we want any real good, any real change in our lives and the world, it must start with prayer. And so let us go forth and let us pray without ceasing. Amen. [00:11:10] (20 seconds)