PRAY FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

Most of the time, in most occasions, when push comes to shove and we know we have to do something to help someone in need, our last and sometimes only resort is to pray for that person. We are powerless to help in any other way. We watch the news on television or read in the paper and see people the world over in dire need for food, clothing, shelter, a safe place to live – the list is endless. We would like to help but there is little or nothing we can do except pray for them. Hopefully we do.

More often than not, if you are like me, the prayer may be a quick one and we move on. Okay, that’s better than no prayer at all. At least we have recognized that people are in need and that we should pray for them and pray that somehow in some way those needs will begin to be met by those who are in place to do so. We hope so.

When the needs of others are brought to our attention, we do tend to want to do what we can to alleviate them, prayer, again, always being one way to do so. But the truth is that every one of us is in need. We may not be hungry or naked or in prison, we may not have serious faith issues or be in mourning or dealing with being unjustly hurt, but we are in need anyway. Everyone is: no exceptions.

If we simply stand on our front porch and look around our neighborhood, even if we do not know our neighbors personally, we can be sure that they are in need in some way. No one’s life is free from worry, care, frustration, doubt. Every one of us has issues we are dealing with that take away peace of mind and heart. Most of the time most of us deal with those issues in the silence of our hearts. We do not share them with anyone, sometimes not even with the ones we love the most. And so we go on from day to day struggling to take each day at a time, making it from one day to the next.

That is not to say that we are all overburdened and weighed down with cares and concerns. It is to say that at times we just are. It is also to say that sometimes all we need to know is that there are those who are praying for us. In fact, we do not even have to know that there are those who care so much about us that they pray for us even if they do not know our needs.

We pray because we believe in the power of prayer. We do not understand that power. We only know that it exists because we have been helped by that power through our own prayers and the prayers of others. Everyone alive needs prayers and everyone alive needs to pray for one another.

What about praying for the dead? I think it is about remembering the dead and knowing that they are praying for us. They don’t need our prayers. We need theirs. What we need most of all when it comes to the issue of prayer is to become more and more aware each day that everyone we meet needs our prayers just as we need theirs.

BEARING WRONGS PATIENTLY

Patience is a virtue. It is one that most of us wish we had in abundance. It may also be the virtue we lack the most. Who of us, after being injured, doesn’t want to hurry the healing process so that we can get on with life? We know we have to be patient even as we can’t wait until the cast is off or the ribs are healed or the surgeon says that we can now play golf again.

The healing process takes time. We have to be patient with it simply because we have no choice. Well, we do have a choice. We all know people, maybe ourselves included, who tried to rush the healing process only to make matters worse. I had a parishioner once who had back surgery four straight Januarys because she refused to allow her body to fully heal. The surgeon told her that if she came back in the following January, he would fuse her spine. She behaved herself and patiently allowed her body to fully heal.

Dealing with bodily healing takes patience and sometimes, it seems, infinite patience depending on our personalities. But it does take patience. We have all learned that the hard way. Hopefully we won’t have to learn it again, but we probably will because, it seems, every time we have to deal with sickness and suffering, we do all we can to rush the healing. Patience, patience, patience.

The same is true and perhaps is even more difficult, when it comes to dealing with those occasions when someone has wronged us: said something that was untruthful, caused us to lose a job or our reputation, deliberately hurt us. It often takes longer to heal in those situations than it does to heal from physical ills. Sometimes it takes a lifetime. There are countless people throughout history whose reputations have only been restored after their deaths when the truth finally came out. In retrospect all we can do is admire their patience in dealing with the injustice of it all.

And that is the issue at hand. How do we deal with the injustice of what another has done to us? It has hurt us deeply, scared us to the quick and the pain and the hurt does not seem to go away even after all these years? How do we do it? From where can we find the patience to make our lives, in some cases, livable? How do we move on and act as if nothing has happened when it indeed has and we get angrier by the day?

There is no easy answer if there is any answer. What we do know is that we have to move on or else we will be stuck in the past and our present and future will suffer as a result. What we have to do is patiently bear the wrong done to us because it cannot be undone. In truth, we may never be able to find it in our hearts to forgive those who have wronged us. They have to live with what they have done and so do we.

For us to live after the wrong done to us, we have to patiently and prayerfully go from one day to the next until we can fully leave the past behind.

FORGIVING INJURIES

Who does not get angry when another deliberately hurts us? It is an instinctual response to do so. No one ever sloughs off deliberate hurt. In fact, our first reaction is the need to get even, to redress the wrong that has happened. And we want the punishment to fit the crime, as it were. An eye for an eye. That works. Unfortunately, even when the punishment desired is actually meted out, it does not undo that harm that was caused that warranted the punishment.

In civil society we execute murderers. In doing so society may believe that that type of punishment makes amends for the type of crime committed. Even if it did, even if there is some sort of satisfaction in the execution, it does not bring back the life of the one who was murdered. Once an injury has taken place, accidental or deliberate, it can never be undone. It is the next step that is important.

And it is a vital next step. If we do nothing about that broken bone that happened when we tripped and fell or when a drunk driver slammed into our car, then we will suffer from the results of an untreated bone the rest of our lives. We don’t do that, of course. We go to the hospital and get the bone reset, allow it to heal, deal with the limitations the healing process imposes, and then move on in life once the healing is completed.

That is what we have to do in order to be physically healed from an injury however that injury occurred. We have to do the same with the results of the spiritual results of that injury and there are always spiritual after-effects. When we do something that causes harm to ourselves, we have to deal not only with getting better physically but also deal with why we did what we did to cause the physical harm. Did we drive to fast? Did we deliberately place ourselves in a dangerous situation? What did we learn from why what happened happened?

That may be the easy part: dealing with self-inflicted injury, whether accidental or purposeful. The harder injury to deal with is when it was inflicted by another, again, whether accidental or deliberate. We can handle more easily the accidental injury in either case. The deliberate is very difficult. When we have inflicted deliberate injury on ourselves or on anther or another has done so to us, that’s when the rubber hits the road.

What we have to do is, first, recognize the truth of what has happened. Then we have to ask for forgiveness from the one we hurt, whether that person is another or ourself – we do have to forgive ourselves – in order to move on. That is never, never, ever easy. Never. How do we forgive ourselves for deliberately hurting ourself? How do we forgive ourself for deliberately injuring another? How do we, like Jesus on the cross, forgive another for deliberately hurting us?

There is no easy answer. But unless we do, we will never move on it life.

COMFORTING THE SORROWFUL

We’ve all had our share of sadness in our lives. Whether what we have experienced could be called our “fair” share or if we believe we have received an “unfair” share of pain and suffering and disappointments – all that is always up for debate. It is also somewhat beside the point. The point being that no one goes through this life without dealing with bouts of sadness and sorrow.

It is during those times when we most need a shoulder to cry on, warm arms to embrace us and a sympathetic heart to feel for us. We don’t necessarily need someone who actually understands what we are experiencing at the moment because the truth is that no one can understand what we are going through even if that person had experienced something similar to what we are now having to deal with. Every situation is different because each of us is different.

When we are being comforted by another, we don’t expect that person to somehow take our sorrow and bear it for us nor even to remove it from our being. Neither is possible; and, even if it were, it should not be done. We need, as human beings, to experience sorrow just as we need to experience joy. We need to experience the ups and downs of life simply in order to be fully human.

That is not to say that we look forward to sorrowful times or even relish when they take hold of our lives. Only a fool suffers willingly or delightfully. When sorrow does fill our lives, perhaps even overwhelm us at the time, what we need most is someone to walk with us and help us through. Suffering alone is the most difficult form of suffering. Thus, when we have the opportunity to walk with someone who is sorrowful, we must reach out and grab the hand that needs to be held and walk the walk.

We need not say anything or do anything except be there. Nothing we can say or do will undo what caused the other to be sad and sorrowful in the first place. What happened happened. What has to happen next is the long and still sorrowful and painful walk from the darkness that now exists to the light that will eventually come.

Taking that walk, whether we are the one who is sorrowful or we are walking with the one who is, is never easy nor was it meant to be. Pain is pain and it hurts. It hurts when we are in pain and it hurts when someone we love is in pain. In fact, it is a sign to us of how much we love another when we feel pain for that person. And if we don’t feel pain or care about the pain? Well, we know what that says as well, don’t we?

That does not mean that we have to suffer with everyone in pain. It simply means that we need to recognize when another is in pain, when others are in pain, and do what we can do to comfort them. The most we sometimes can do is pray for them. But when we can be there in person to comfort them, we must.