Fifth Sunday after Easter
Amen, amen, I say to you: if you ask the Father any thing in my name, he will give it to you. Hitherto, you have not asked any thing in my name (Jn 16:23-24).
With these few brief words opening today’s Gospel passage, we have summarised the whole message that Holy Mother Church invites us to reflect upon in the coming week. There is no doubt the presence of this verse in the Gospel for this Sunday, coupled with a number of natural catastrophes at the time that led to the institution of what we call the Rogations, on the first three days of this week, Monday to Wednesday. It was St Mamertus, bishop of Vienne in France, who started this practice way back in the 5th century, and the custom, though in most places abandoned in the 1960s (surprise?), is still quite alive and thriving. As we frequently hear of natural disasters and wars from our own country and around the world, the relevance of such an institution should touch us and inspire our participation in the procession of Rogations, which will take place before Mass each of the first three days of this week. If you cannot actually be present, it is praiseworthy to recite the Litany of the Saints for the same intentions.
So, what are these intentions? As mentioned, the first concern seems to be protection from the environment and international strifes. The litany names “plagues, famines and wars” from which we plead to be delivered, as well as that God’s goodness may guide our crops to fruition. Here in this part of Tasmania, a regular request at Rogation time is an abundance of rain, which is sorely needed to fill up our rivers and dams. And so we do so with a heart filled with confidence that God will not abandon us to an unending drought but will provide for us, lest we shrivel up and get blown away by the wind.
But the Rogations are not only about these things. Indeed, other petitions in the litany ask that we be protected from all evil, in particular from the evil spirit of fornication and eternal death of the soul. These petitions remind us of the essential needs of our brief pilgrimage on this planet, namely of not losing sight of the eternal goal, not allowing ourselves to be sidetracked by any of the legions of distractions that humans have pursued for centuries, but which our brazen age has found the way of putting at our fingertips non-stop, day and night, emptying so many minds and hearts of good, wholesome pious thoughts, and filling them with rubbish that not only does not satisfy but leaves empty, desperate and prone to death.
Ultimately, then, the Rogations are about prayer, about reconnecting with deep prayer, which is our lifeline to our Creator and Redeemer. Let us remember what prayer is, what it is supposed to do in our lives, and why it is essential never to abandon it or return to it if it has already been forsaken.
This is all the more relevant due to the imminence of the feast of the Ascension this coming Thursday. Ascension is the feast of hope. It is the feast that draws us towards our heavenly home, enabling us to live now in mind and heart where we hope to live in all truth very soon. It is, therefore, the time of year in which we need to arouse our desire for God, and it is precisely prayer that does this. St Thomas says that prayer is the interpreter of our desires for God. When we turn to prayer, by the very fact, we are making it clear to God that we long for Him, that we want to be with Him, that we are grateful for Him and love Him. All this is implicit in every authentic effort to pray. Still, it becomes more and more explicit as we persevere in prayer, in very much the same way that a man may very well love his wife in good times, but when she falls ill and needs him to care for her, his love if it is true, will grow stronger and stronger precisely because it becomes sacrificial. A certain woman who cared for her mother for many years of mental alienation during which the mother was unable to recognise her own daughter was once asked whether or not it was hard for her during those years not to receive any recognition from her mother. This noble woman replied that this question had never occurred to her. The question was not: does my mother recognise me? But rather: do I recognise my mother? A marvellous answer, revealing true filial love that can know no rest until the beloved mother has completed her exile on this earth.
Something similar must happen in prayer. We are all happy to go to prayer when we feel good about God and ourselves. It is more difficult when we do not understand what is happening to us or why God allows certain things to occur in our lives. It is then that we must be very careful not to allow ourselves to drift away from prayer. To do so would be to prove that we are not children of God but mercenaries who come to prayer and to church for the yummies that we get because they make us feel good. True love is about standing firm, persevering in prayer, and prolonged prayer through the dark nights and trials. It is in the heart of those times of our lives that our faith is destined to grow, to mature, to make us into saints.
So, let us take advantage of the Rogation Days to stir up our devotion to prayer, both vocal and mental. Remembering, on the one hand, that prayer is never wasted time and, on the other, that prayer that is voluntarily omitted when it could be done is always detrimental to us and to the whole world, for every soul that rises lifts up the world, and every soul that goes down brings the world down with it.
We can safely affirm, with many great spiritual authors ripened by experience, that the failure to pray is the cause of all our woes. If we are deceived or led into illusion, it is for lack of prayer; if we fall into sin or any kind of fault, it is for having failed to pray; if we wander off the path and leave the Church or even leave the faith entirely, it is for having failed to pray, and to pray with constancy. One of the great doctors of the Church who spoke most eloquently about prayer writes: “All the saints are in Heaven because they prayed much. They would be less holy if they had prayed less, and they would not be in Heaven at all if they had not prayed. All the damned are in hell because they ceased to pray!… And they would not be in hell if they had not ceased to pray” (St Alphonsus Liguori).
If only we could learn to convert everything to prayer. Convert our joys to the prayer of praise; convert our pains to the prayer of petition; convert our disappointments to the prayer of abandonment into the hands of our all-loving Father; and above all, convert our temptations into a prayer of trust that God will find an issue and not let us lose His grace. In other words, we should pray when things are calm; we should pray when in the midst of a tempest; we should pray upon waking, throughout the day and at night. Whether we are tired or distracted, we should learn to turn all things into prayer. If only we could do this, we would see our lives change dramatically. Instead of turning to prayer only when we have to, prayer would become our best friend, a companion we desire to be with, a refuge that we seek out eagerly, and from which a path opens, a path to peace, to grace, to salvation, in a word, to God Himself.
