Everyone knows, or ought to know, something spectacular that a Catholic bishop named John Chrysostom — canonised, and counted a Doctor of the Church — taught in the fourth century, and left behind as the legacy of what he had lived himself: "There is nothing on the face of the earth more powerful than a man who prays, for he makes himself a sharer in the power of God."
What an astonishing thing to say. It may be a discovery for you, if this is your first time here. It may be a shock for you, if you have walked with God for years and never once put it that way. It may be a shaking for you, if you were once a person of deep prayer and today live in a lukewarmness that delights the devil. It may be the answer you asked God for, if you were wondering whether to go on living this seriously. And it may simply be a joy for you, if you already live in prayer, on prayer, and from prayer.
There is an enormous richness and an endless list of things to say about prayer — above all for Catholics, who learn from the Church that Christ himself founded how necessary prayer is, and how we are to remain in it always.
In her daily liturgy:
"The Lord be with you... And with your spirit! Lift up your hearts... We lift them up to the Lord! Let us give thanks to the Lord our God... It is right and just!"
And in the richness of the word of God:
"Pray without ceasing." (1 Thess 5:17)
Our subject today is prayer, but the focus will be narrower: the effects that prayer produces in our life and in the lives of others.
You who belong to God — however long you have been walking — know already that prayer is the breathing of the soul. I do not know whether anyone has ever asked you to pray for them. But one day someone will: for a person, for a particular situation, for some difficulty they are carrying.
That is an ordinary and a necessary thing among Christians, and above all among Catholics, because only a humble person asks for prayer. Only someone who admits he is weak on his own, and who believes that the prayer of others has power. And the one who receives that request and truly intercedes, taking the cause as if it were his own, praying hard for that grace to come, has understood what communion means. In the end both of them gain: the one who asks and the one who prays.
To ask someone to pray costs nothing but the will, the desire, and the humility to ask. Nothing else is required. As long as the request is clear, your part is done and done well.
For the one who receives that request, it is not enough to know what to do, to have the technique and the rest of it. There is one thing that decides whether that prayer will have the effect hoped for, and it is holiness of life: communion with God, intimacy with him. It is a life plunged constantly into the powerful presence of the Lord.
Sadly, many people are still taken in by outward appearances and outward gestures — by men and women who present themselves as people of praise, of deep intimacy, of supernatural anointing, because they are inside a church, because they wear a crucifix, because they are carrying a cross, a rosary or a Bible. What actually counts is the sincere holiness a person lives.
Someone who truly belongs to God will produce the fruit of the life he is leading. Christ gave us a marvellous piece of advice in the Sermon on the Mount.
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them." (Mt 7:15-20)
We have to stop this foolish, fleshly habit of judging people by how good and holy — or how sinful and profane — they happen to look. There is an old saying that whoever looks at the face does not see the heart, and that is exactly what Christ taught, recalling the prophet Isaias, and he taught it firmly.
"Hypocrites, well hath Isaias prophesied of you, saying: This people honoureth me with their lips: but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and commandments of men." (Mt 15:7-9)
Men and women today keep up a tidy and saintly image before others while living an impurity and a squalor without limit — and in truth, if they are not found out in this life, the word of the Lord has already settled the matter. Christ goes on teaching us:
"And he said to them: Doth a candle come in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick? For there is nothing hid, which shall not be made manifest: neither was it made secret, but that it may come abroad. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear." (Mk 4:21-23)
And in the Old Testament too:
"And the Lord said to Samuel: Look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stature: because I have rejected him, nor do I judge according to the look of man: for man seeth those things that appear, but the Lord beholdeth the heart." (1 Kings 16:7)
It will all be uncovered on the day of the universal judgment, when the whole earth is called to account and each one is judged for what he thought, for what he said, for what he did and for what he failed to do. Everything will be brought into the open before all mankind.
This is why it is not worth living a double life, one foot in God's boat and the other in the world's; a pretended life, arranged to please everybody; a mediocre life of lies and rehearsed postures. God knows all of it. And one day we will have to stand in front of him.
Let us come to the central passage of this reflection, to think about it and then to put it into practice.
"Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity." (Mt 7:21-23)
Not everyone who says "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of God, but the one who actually does the will of the Lord. Which means we can be people of much prayer, always in church, spending our time praying — and still that prayer may never reach or touch the way we live.
And as if that were not enough, we can go as far as preaching, casting out devils, even working miracles, and still hear Christ say at our judgment: I never knew you. That is hard, and we ought to pay attention to so grave a warning, because there is no use in doing many things if we do not do them well, if we do not do them for the glory of the Lord.
There is little use in saying many rosaries if we say them carelessly — though worse still is not saying them at all. Little use in reading a great deal of Scripture carelessly, and never letting it get in and change anything. Little use in praying aloud in front of others if it is lip-deep, done to keep up an image. Little use in shutting yourself in a room for hours of prayer with your heart somewhere else.
At the end of time everything will be brought to light, and then we will know who truly belonged to God and who did not. Why keep hiding, and pretending to a strong experience of God, to mystical experience and the rest of it, when what we really want is attention for ourselves, and to fill some emptiness inside?
Faith without works really is a dead faith (cf. Jas 2:26). But whom have you been serving — the works of God, or the God of works? Have you been trying to please the Lord's community, or the Lord of every community? Much of it depends on where we are looking. Saint Augustine tells the story of two men in a prison who looked out through the window. One saw mud. The other saw the stars.
We need to look upward, and to do things with Christ, through Christ and for Christ, as every Holy Mass teaches us — our life of prayer included, the way we pray, the way we lift our prayer to the Father after the example of Jesus. Only then will our prayer be truly powerful, powerful enough even to heal, and to bring many people onto the road to God.
See what Saint James teaches about this:
"And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much. Elias was a man passible like unto us: and with prayer he prayed that it might not rain upon the earth, and it rained not for three years and six months. And he prayed again: and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. My brethren, if any of you err from the truth, and one convert him: He must know that he who causeth a sinner to be converted from the error of his way, shall save his soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins." (Jas 5:15-20)
It is not enough to have that fervour in prayer, that wild faith of the prophet Elias which could stop the rain. You have to be what he was: a just man, a holy man, one who seeks the will of God above everything else. And speaking of justice, we cannot forget the foster father of Jesus, Saint Joseph. You may not know it, but the Church holds him to be the greatest of the saints in heaven after Mary.
Such holiness is the fruit of a full surrender to the Lord, and of stripping oneself of one's own will and freedom in order to be a slave of what God had already prepared for that life before it began. Nobody is the fruit of chance, and nobody is born for nothing. Like Saint Joseph and like Elias, we are called to live this, so that our prayer may have its powerful effect.
So then: if our prayer is to have great power, we have to take up a holy life. Fr. Léo, SCJ, used to teach that to be holy is to be made whole; to be made whole is to be healed; and to be healed is to have the capacity to love as Jesus loved. He also said that holiness, holy behaviour, friendship, purity and a healed heart are never improvised — they are built.
Whoever is closer to God has a more powerful prayer than whoever is further away, because God always blesses the one who seeks him, and because — as we saw at the beginning — a man who shares in the power of God becomes the most powerful man alive.
Whoever works each day at his own conversion, at changing his life, at bettering his character, at becoming and remaining a spiritual person, at renouncing his own will in order to live the will of God, at building a life wholly consecrated and given over to the Lord, will always have a prayer that God can use for the good of his people, breaking the chains of the devil and pouring out power over the earth.
In the Catholic Church there are seven sacraments, and they follow a constant. We need to understand a little more about them to understand what comes next.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, in paragraphs 1127 and 1128:
"Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify. They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies. The Father always hears the prayer of his Son's Church which, in the epiclesis of each sacrament, expresses her faith in the power of the Spirit. As fire transforms into itself everything it touches, so the Holy Spirit transforms into the divine life whatever is subjected to his power.
This is the meaning of the Church's affirmation that the sacraments act ex opere operato (literally: "by the very fact of the action's being performed"), i.e., by virtue of the saving work of Christ, accomplished once for all. It follows that "the sacrament is not wrought by the righteousness of either the celebrant or the recipient, but by the power of God." From the moment that a sacrament is celebrated in accordance with the intention of the Church, the power of Christ and his Spirit acts in and through it, independently of the personal holiness of the minister. Nevertheless, the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them."
That magnificent thing in the Church called ex opere operato means that the sacraments act by the power of Christ entrusted to his Church, and that their efficacy does not depend on the holiness of the minister — priest or deacon, as the case may be — while the fruits of the sacraments do also depend on the disposition of the one receiving them.
To which we can add, with complete certainty, this: the sacrament truly confers the grace of Christ, fully and powerfully. But when the minister is holy, when he does the will of God and does not seek to please men but Christ whom he serves (cf. Gal 1:10), the effects and the fruits are far more abundant, by reason of the just and holy manner in which they are given.
When you belong to a community with a holy priest — one who does the will of God, and helps, encourages, instructs and draws everyone else to do the same — what you live is heaven on earth, because people are bound and attentive to God far more than to anything else that matters less.
The prayer and the works of a holy person surpass by a long way, before God and before men, those done by someone who does not live holiness so deeply. When a person is dependent on God the chances of going wrong are small; sins do not carry the same weight, because the holiness God pours out is supernatural; the virtues are great and the vices are cancelled in the power of the blood of Jesus; the glory of God takes over and everything works for his praise — even the mistakes.
So there is not much more to say or to add to a truth like that. We need to live it, and that is all. We are not denying here the need to pray much, to seek and to grow; we are taking a step beyond it.
On one side we have the marvellous teaching of a Doctor of the Church, Saint Teresa of Ávila, who said: "He who works for God in mortal sin does not intend to give glory to God, but pleasure to the devil."
On the other side we have the teaching of this reflection: that we must take the opportunity God gives us, so that our prayer may have the effects his word promises — effects that our holiness, more than our works or even our faith, will lead us to experience.
Let yourself be fed and won over by the word of God, so that hope may rise again in your heart at what Jesus said, and let us join in prayer.
"Amen, amen I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do, he also shall do; and greater than these shall he do. Because I go to the Father: and whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do: that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask me any thing in my name, that I will do." (Jn 14:12-14)
Beloved Father, in the power and in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, your dearly loved Son and our Lord, I want to give myself to you. I want to enter your heart and beg the abundant grace you desire to pour out on my life far more than I desire it myself. Moved by this reading I make the decision to open myself to you, and to renounce everything that has kept me from your love and from your will.
I ask your help now, Lord. Come and help me, because I have no power to change on my own; I need you, holy Father. Pour out on me a spirit of conversion, of holiness, of purity, of spiritual renewal and of strength over all those areas of my life where I am weak and where I keep falling (speak to the Lord intimately about this).
Father of goodness and mercy, pour out on me the power of your Holy Spirit. My greatest need today is to change my life: to take up my calling, my mission, my vocation; to accept your will; to love my family, to love your Church, even to love myself — for so many are the barriers and the things that have driven me from you that I no longer know or understand what love is. Give me an experience of your love, Lord.
Spirit of God, you who search the depths of hearts and reveal all that is hidden, come and act in my life, and lift up in that language only God understands the thing I need. Honestly, Lord, I cannot see it. Come and show my heart where I am going wrong. Come and teach me to pray and to act as I ought.
Taking hold of all that I believe the Lord is doing in me in this short moment of prayer, I want to praise and thank you, Lord my God. How shall I repay the Lord for all the wonders and graces he has poured without end into my life? Ah, Lord, like David, my sacrifice is a contrite, repentant and stripped heart, which the Lord will not reject. My offering is my whole life: my past, my present and my future, which are in your hands, for I am yours, I belong to you.
I praise you with everything and for everything that I am and have. Thank you, Jesus, for the grace of waking me up to life and showing me that I must live holiness. I want to take it up, to praise the Lord and to make reparation for so many sins and so many things in my life that did not please you. May my life be a constant and sublime praise of the Lord. With the Church I ask you, Lord: give me the grace to serve you with a life that is pleasing to you. Amen! Alleluia!
"I will extol thee, O Lord, for thou hast upheld me: and hast not made my enemies to rejoice over me. O Lord my God, I have cried to thee, and thou hast healed me." (Ps 29:2-3)
What a joy it will be if, some time after we have taken up and applied what we have learned here, we can testify — as Saint James teaches, "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." (Jas 1:22) — that we have passed from the water to the wine, and from the wine to the blood. And in the blood of Jesus we are more than conquerors, justified and sanctified for the victory that is already ours.
May God bless us, and bring us to know the effects of prayer in earnest.
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