Intercessory prayer runs throughout Sacred Scripture and continues to transform lives today. A missionary, a layperson, and a contemplative nun share how they have experienced the strength of knowing they are sustained by the prayers of others and how that experience has also led them to pray for others.
Prayer is part of every Christian’s life. We pray to give thanks, ask for forgiveness, praise God, present our needs, or intercede for others. From Moses pleading for the people in the desert (Nm 21), through the centurion who begs for his servant (Mt 8), Martha and Mary asking for Lazarus (Jn 11), or the Church gathered praying for Peter in prison (Acts 12), the Bible presents intercession as an expression of love. God wishes to count on the prayer of His people to pour out His grace upon others.
We often turn to God with intensity when difficulty arrives. It is a sincere prayer, born of necessity. But faith also invites us to discover His presence in so many daily gifts we receive without barely stopping to contemplate them. Only a grateful heart learns to recognize that every good thing has its origin in Him.
Friar Javier Hernández has experienced this firsthand during his years serving as a missionary in the Amazon. Javier lived with wonder and joy the consequence of the prayers of many from other places. Faced with the material and pastoral problems inherent to the location, they encountered providence. Difficulties were resolved in an admirable and swift manner, and the friars looked to heaven thanking the Father, with the certainty in their hearts that the blessings they experienced were His gift, in response to the prayers of their brothers from other parishes of the order.
And probably the people who prayed for the missions, for the missionaries, and for the specific needs of Friar Javier’s community were never aware of the impact. Perhaps they never knew that their prayer coincided with unexpected help, a difficulty resolved, or a community strengthened. But Javier does remember. And, looking back, he recognizes the mark of so many people who sustained the mission without ever having set foot in the Amazon. In each gift, there was a grateful, relieved, and comforted heart that looked to heaven and saw the face of its Father.
Life Sustained by Love
However, it is not necessary to travel so far to experience the strength of prayer. From the ARCORES International office in Madrid, Eduardo Antonio Sogliani González, Administration and Fundraising Technician, shows us how even the simplest testimony bears the mark of those who have prayed for him. This young man has clearly experienced the light in his life as a consequence of the prayers of those who love him. His testimony illustrates a special gift of prayer: it makes love present.
Intercession does not only ask things of God. It also communicates something profoundly human: “someone is thinking of me.”
For Eduardo, knowing that other people pray for him not only fills him with hope; it reminds him that he is loved. And that love received ends up becoming love given. Those who experience the strength of being sustained end up feeling the desire to sustain others with their prayer as well. It is for this reason that in dialogue with the Beloved, love becomes present and multiplies. It gives us strength to continue, to entrust, and to love in a pure and sincere manner.
Consecrating Life to Prayer
Finally, we move to a cloistered convent in the heart of Granada. There we find a radical testimony of what love in prayer can mean in a woman’s life. While many dedicate a few minutes a day to praying for those they love, there are people who make that intercession an entire vocation. Sister Alicia, an Augustinian Recollect of the Granada convent, decided to consecrate her life to praying for others. For her it is a force that impels you to change your perspective, that sustains, comforts, and accompanies. For her, interceding for others is part of the heart of her vocation. She believes that praying for others also helps her, shaping her heart to love more and bringing her heart closer to those who experience any type of need. Praying for others involves going out of oneself, and that leads us to encounter God who dwells in the other.
“Prayer made with faith and humility, with a pure heart, transforms like the drop that falls little by little, but with constancy and perforates the stone. Thus prayer is balm for wounds, closeness where there is distance, peace where there is pain. Prayer heals.”
Sister Alicia, Augustinian Recollect
And if this is true… what does it move me to do?
If prayer can sustain a missionary in the jungle, make love present in the life of a layperson, and become the mission of a contemplative, then it is worth asking ourselves: for whom does God want me to pray today?
In the coming months ten Augustinian Recollect friars will receive priestly ordination. They are about to pronounce a “yes” that will mark their entire lives. From that day they will administer Baptism, reconcile in the name of Christ in the sacrament of Penance, anoint the sick, proclaim the Gospel, and celebrate the Eucharist, making Christ present for the people of God.
At rezaporunfraile.recoletos.org you can receive the name of one of these future priests and accompany him with your prayer in this decisive moment of his vocation.
Because your prayer has the power to be a gift, light, and consolation for someone else.
