Once the work of salvation has been begun it must be brought to completion; were God to let his people perish, this might be interpreted as a sign of God’s inability to bring the project of salvation to completion. God cannot allow this: he is the good Lord who saves, the guarantor of life, he is the God of mercy and forgiveness, of deliverance from sin that kills.(from the General Audience, Pope Benedict XVI, 1 June 2011)

These past few weeks with the acts of violence and death that have permeated the news headlines we once more heard the refrain, “We need more than prayers and good thoughts.” to help solve the numerous acts of violence. And as I wrote earlier and as I will write today this is very true: we do need more than “just” prayers and good thoughts but…if we do not ground our actions in our relationship with God then the human will with it’s brokenness and fallen state will only produce more violence, hatred and evil in trying to solve the newest epidemic of sin.
As we continue to look at Pope Benedict XVI talks on prayer we come to the his reflection on intercessory prayer in using the example of Moses as a man of prayer. He notes that throughout the story of Moses we hear certain phrases over and over again: “Moses asked the Lord…he interceded for the people…he prayed…he addressed the Lord….he saw and spoke “to him face to face, as a man speaks to a friend.” (Pope Benedict XVI) What we come to see and understand is that in his prayer Moses was active with God and his people. He didn’t sit back and just wait but rather he interceded for them actively and forcefully but always after he prayerfully listened and spoke with God.
Prayer is the active listening of emptying our hearts of the rancor and division to seek the unity of God. One of the traditional ways, we as Catholics, empty our hearts is in fasting (yes, fasting is not just for Lent on Fridays). “By fasting Moses showed that he was awaiting the gift of the divine Law as a source of life: this Law reveals God’s will and nourishes the human heart, bringing men and women to enter into a covenant with the Most High, who is the source of life, who is life itself.” (Benedict XVI) We often want to jump into the “doing of something” in the immediate aftermath of some act of sin to “fix the problem” but as we hear Moses awaited the gift of Divine guidance trusting in God’s will in the life of the community, not tolerating the sin, but rather seeking a way of unity…even unity with those who most egregiously sinned against the community and drew many into the same act of sin.
Moses in prayer, as our example, reminds us of our need to seek the divine mystery in our lives and in the life of the community because there can be, “This is a constant temptation on the journey of faith: to avoid the divine mystery by constructing a comprehensible god who corresponds with one’s own plans, one’s own projects.”(Benedict XVI) As a Catholic Church we are called to stand up against hatred, bigotry and violence but also seeking healing, reconciliation and sanctity in our interactions with all people. We are not a faith seeking to “cancel people” because of sin, we are a faith seeking to renew people in the face of mercy, the mercy which the only source can be Jesus Christ. The active prayer of intercession is anchored to mercy, “The prayer of intercession is permeated by love of the brethren and love of God, they are inseparable. Moses, the intercessor, is the man torn between two loves that overlap in prayer in a single desire for good…(where he, like us)…wanting what God wanted, the intercessor entered more and more deeply into knowledge of the Lord and of his mercy, and became capable of a love that extended even to the total gift of himself. With prayer, wanting what God wanted, the intercessor entered more and more deeply into knowledge of the Lord and of his mercy, and became capable of a love that extended even to the total gift of himself.” (Pope Benedict XVI) We must become this intercessor.
The only way we will truly find healing and holiness is when we ground each and every action in Jesus Christ and allow his love, his mercy, his forgiveness to be the first actions in our lives. It is not the easy what of knee-jerk reaction seeking to amputate the other from our community but rather the long path of healing, often more painful but ultimately restores the wholeness to the Body of Christ. Let us therefore begin with our intercessory prayer for peace and healing and go out as true disciples seeking to be sisters and brothers, true intercessors, to all we encounter on our mission of life.
God bless
Fr. Mark

This is God’s salvation which involves mercy, but at the same time also the denunciation of the truth of the sin, of the evil that exists, so that the sinner, having recognized and rejected his sin, may let God forgive and transform him. In this way prayers of intercession make active in the corrupt reality of sinful man divine mercy which finds a voice in the entreaty of the person praying and is made present through him wherever there is a need for salvation. (Pope Benedict XVI)

I think we should meditate upon this reality. Christ stands before God and is praying for me. His prayer on the Cross is contemporary with all human beings, contemporary with me. He prays for me, he suffered and suffers for me, he identified himself with me, taking our body and the human soul. And he asks us to enter this identity of his, making ourselves one body, one spirit with him because from the summit of the Cross he brought not new laws, tablets of stone, but himself, his Body and his Blood, as the New Covenant. (Pope Benedict XVI)