I was sitting in our beautiful parish church of St. Lawrence the Martyr when I realized, like a bolt of thunder, I was praying the wrong prayer! It was a moment when you realize you are asking God for something you want and not what God’s will is for his Holy Catholic Church.

Two simple things helped me understand how wrong my prayer was: first was the wonderful stained glass window of St. Lawrence and the second was reading Pope St. Paul VI apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World)”
What was the wrong prayer? It had been a prayer I have prayed at every parish I have been assigned as pastor…it is a simple prayer….a prayer I rattle off a dozen times a day…it goes something like this…”Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Lawrence the Martyr, may you fill our parish and school with many happy and holy families.”

Pope St. Paul VI wrote about evangelization as a complete and full way of life. We as part of the Body of Christ, as living stones of the Church are evangelizers of the world. How we live our lives and how we participate in the society surrounding us is a necessary step of bringing the word of God to others. He writes, “The Church is an evangelizer, but she begins by being evangelized herself. She is the community of believers, the community of hope lived and communicated, the community of brotherly love, and she needs to listen unceasingly to what she must believe, to her reasons for hoping, to the new commandment of love.” (#15)

To be a community listening is part of the Synod of the Diocese of San Jose as well as the greater Church. Sitting quietly and listening in prayer and offering the prayer for the Church to be filled was an important part of the epiphany that I was praying the wrong prayer. It is the realization you have, when you are young, that God isn’t going to get you the new bike as if by magic but rather God, when we listen, will help us discern the needs we have and open our hearts to discover the greater good.

We are called to be more than just good listeners. Listening to the God in the quiet of the heart is important and vital, but if this is all we do then the active ministry of love and service will quickly descend into a crutch of hoping some one else will fix the problem. Rather St. Paul VI reminds us, “Having been sent and evangelized, the Church herself sends out evangelizers. She puts on their lips the saving Word, she explains to them the message of which she herself is the depositary, she gives them the mandate which she herself has received and she sends them out to preach. To preach not their own selves or their personal ideas, but a Gospel of which neither she nor they are the absolute masters and owners, to dispose of it as they wish, but a Gospel of which they are the ministers, in order to pass it on with complete fidelity.” (#15) To often we can fall into the temptation of preaching ourselves rather than Jesus Christ. We let humility be put into a box and the ego of “people are attracted to me” becomes our guiding light. As I sat in the quiet of the Church, looking at the beautiful and powerful stained glass windows, it was a reminder of the legacy which we have inherited and how this history and tradition forms our hearts and the message forms us to speak with wisdom and love.

So what is the new prayer? If we are called to listen carefully to the whisper of God in prayer, if we are invited to actively participate in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, the we are called to be transformed. To see the world a little differently and with a joy and blessing that goes beyond the world and into eternity. It is the “amen” of belief. Fr. Mike Schmitz in the Catechism in a Year in one episode reminded us, when we as Christians utter the “amen” of belief we should be doing this as if our very life depended upon our “yes” to God. St. Paul VI shares this same conviction when he writes. “Yet, one can never sufficiently stress the fact that evangelization does not consist only of the preaching and teaching of a doctrine. For evangelization must touch life: the natural life to which it gives a new meaning, thanks to the evangelical perspectives that it reveals; and the supernatural life, which is not the negation but the purification and elevation of the natural life.” (#47)
What is this new prayer I have begun to Prayer…imagine the stained glass of St. Lawrence in our church and pray with me: Lord Jesus, through the intercession of St. Lawrence the Martyr may we go out and work to fill our parish and school with the treasures he brought to you…the poor, the broken, the wounded, all those we are called to serve. Amen (as if our lives depended upon it!)
St. Lawrence the Martyr….pray for us
God Bless
Fr. Mark