“It was to be necessary for God himself to become that one righteous person. And this is the mystery of the Incarnation: to guarantee a just person he himself becomes man. There will always be one righteous person because it is he. However, God himself must become that just man. The infinite and surprising divine love was to be fully manifest when the Son of God was to become man, the definitive Righteous One, the perfect Innocent who would bring salvation to the whole world by dying on the Cross, forgiving and interceding for those who “know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). Therefore the prayer of each one will find its answer, therefore our every intercession will be fully heard.” (Pope Benedict XVI and all quotes from the General Audience 18 May 2011)

One of the most common requests I receive as a priest is the simple phrase, “Father, would you please pray for…. The requests are varied and range from very urgent and at time grave to the small and continuing troubles of family, country and world. This request for intercession is something we need to be attentive too and hopefully bringing prayers into the center of life. Because our call to intercede in prayer goes deeper than the response we find often in the secular world where to “I will keep you in my thoughts” is the pail response to prayer.
Pope Benedict uses the famous story of Abraham seeking mercy for the people of Sodom. The reality is this conversation between God and Abraham is greater than the surface bargaining and testing that are first noticed, rather as he notes, “In this way he brings a new idea of justice into play: not the one that is limited to punishing the guilty, as men do, but a different, divine justice that seeks goodness and creates it through forgiveness that transforms the sinner, converts and saves him. With his prayer, therefore, Abraham does not invoke a merely compensatory form of justice but rather an intervention of salvation which, taking into account the innocent, also frees the wicked from guilt by forgiving them.” (Pope Benedict)
The greatness and deepness of intercessory prayer is we place ourselves inside the suffering and hurt were we participate in the lives of those we pray for even when they are on the other side of our planet. Abraham steps in and takes up the cause of not only the just but the sinner too and we are called to do the same as disciples of Jesus Christ. As noted in the first quote above, God becomes one of us in the presence of the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, Jesus, where he intercedes, he steps into the world to be present to all where he reminds us, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (LK 5:32) The call we have to intercede for others, in prayer, is an invitation to move more deeply into their lives in a relationship of love where we begin to see them as sisters and brothers worthy of love because this is how Jesus/God sees us.
It is important, as Pope Benedict reminds us, to remember our prayers are for those in need…including our enemies and even those who commit the most heinous crimes against society, “Yet the Lord does not want the wicked to die, but rather that they convert and live (cf. Ez 18:23; 33:11); his desire is always to forgive, to save, to give life, to transform evil into good. Well, it is this divine desire itself which becomes in prayer the desire of the human being and is expressed through the words of intercession.” (Pope Benedict)
Whether the intercession of prayer is for a person suffering from cancer or another suffering from the self imposed prison of addiction our call, as disciples of Jesus Christ, is to reach out, to step into, to walk and be with the other in the unity of love. It is only here that we find the fullness of God’s mercy and healing grace.
Please pray for me…I am praying for you.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“Dear brothers and sisters, the prayer of intercession of Abraham, our father in the faith, teaches us to open our hearts ever wider to God’s superabundant mercy so that in daily prayer we may know how to desire the salvation of humanity and ask for it with perseverance and with trust in the Lord who is great in love. Many thanks.” (Pope Benedict)