Today’s readings (Jeremiah 31:1-7, Jeremiah 31:10-13 and Matthew 15:21-28), promise us that God hears us. The first reading and the song from Jeremiah promise that “with age old love I have loved you… again I will restore (or 'build') you” and claim “The Lord will guard us.” Then we have the story from Matthew of the persistent foreign woman who wore our Lord down until he finally said, “O woman, great is your faith,” and healed her daughter.
We all pray our prayers of petition: “Cure this illness. Help me do this. Make my car start, the storm pass, the decision come my way.” We want favors, we want comfort, we want miracles. I’ve written before that as a kid we said the rosary as a family (except Dad, who was not Catholic), and we were exhorted to pray devoutly for “the conversion of Russia,” and sure enough, in the ‘80s the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union collapsed. Yet the economic and social situations in Russia and other nations of the former USSR are surely not models of fully “converted” societies today–-I heard today that 60% of all pregnancies in Russia are aborted, and the life expectancy in that country has lowered from 67 to 57 years-- nor do we see perfection in any nation. We are always praying for “peace in the world.” We persist in asking for the miracle, the healing.
In fact, Jesus taught us to ask for miracles, teaching us to pray “Our Father … Thy Kingdom come…. Give us this day our daily bread … Deliver us from evil.” Look at the newspaper, turn on CNN: we haven’t exactly been delivered from evil, have we? Yet this Canaanite woman’s story encourages us to keep praying. After all, it’s only 20 centuries, a tiny bit of time in this planet’s history, since Jesus taught us to pray. We might as well persist a while longer!
Every day I get requests for specific prayers for such needs as cures of diseases, jobs for the unemployed, successful pregnancies, peaceful deaths for the dying, comfort for grieving families, support for our nation’s armed services. I believe that our prayers benefit the people we pray for. I know that praying for these people benefits me. I can’t give justice in words to how I feel after I’ve prayed on behalf of others’ needs. It’s like I don’t even think about my own needs anymore—I know they will be taken care of by someone else’s prayers!
Today is the feast day of St. John Vianney, the “Cure of Ars” (meaning the parish priest of the village of Ars in France), the patron saint of priests. He was famous for his faith, love, prayer and sacrifices, and huge numbers of people came from all over the world to have him hear their confessions. Remembering his example, let us pray today for the needs of our priests, and of all men and women who minister to their fellow Christians, teaching them to persist in prayer for the world’s healing as Jesus did, “Thy Kingdom Come.”
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