More on the Prayer of the Faithful

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Father Joe

Due to familiarity, we become so used to the Bidding Prayers at the Liturgy that we tend to mouth the responses with little reflection. It is not the volume of many voices that makes the prayer heard. It is not the number of those saying the responses that makes the prayer effective. At the Liturgy, we come together to be a sign to all that we are one body in Christ. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” All of us, because of God’s grace, are one with each other and one with Christ. A common response is “Lord, hear our prayer.” We are not so much addressing here Jesus Christ as Lord (although he is such by virtue of his divinity) but God the Father. Christ is praying with us as head of his body, the Church. Our prayer is offered in the name of Jesus Christ. This does not mean that we are name-droppers, but that we are conscious that Christ is still our intercessor and priest. There is a structure to the Church’s General Intercessions. We should pray for Christ’s Vicar on earth, our Holy Father. We should pray for civil authorities so as to “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” We should pray for universal needs, for victims of tragedies, those in war, those in poverty, etc. The greatest poverty is not to know God. We pray for the needs of missionaries and for those who cannot gather to pray in freedom as we do. So we should be conscious of the universal Church as much as we are of little parochial gatherings. Christ gives many examples in the Gospel of perseverance in prayer. There is no mathematical goal or a celestial number-counter scoring how many times we say, “Lord, hear our prayer.” Repetition is not a wakeup call for a deity who is oblivious to our petitions. Rather, he allows that perseverance and repetitive call to form us, the petitioners. We become in that praying what we ought to be— God’s children, asking our heavenly Father for our needs. This develops what we ought to be, members of Christ’s body praying with each other and for each other in union with Jesus Christ, our head. We ask him to take us with him in that Prayer of the Faithful to the throne of the Father, so that the Father will sees in us what he sees in his only begotten Son, dutiful and trusting children in whom he is well pleased.