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The Importance of Prayer
On Friday evening, while praying the rosary, I looked at the pamphlet that had this related passage from Scripture for the Scourging at the Pillar: Luke 22:44 - "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and he said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation." For some reason what struck my mind was the "sleeping for sorrow" that the Apostles were doing. I immediately connected it to our own time, when, all too often, we see our culture working to eliminate Jesus (just like the Apostles were seeing) and we are tired of it. What can we do to stop the culture of death, to stop the loss of morality from our society, to bring people back from a materialistic way of life to that of Christ? Jesus tells us how: Matthew 26:40 - "could you not watch with me one hour?" Prayer, not force (as Peter would soon find out) is the way to fight the spiritual battle that we are in. We need to "rise and pray" if we want to defeat the enemy, which is the world, the flesh, and the devil - time to stop sleeping.
OK, the second thought that goes along with that one. The Apostles spread the faith across their entire world (one that was just as pagan as ours) with 12 guys, in a generation. What did they have that we don't? Education? Nope. Transportation? Nope. Communication? Nope. Confirmation? Nope. In pretty much every conceivable aid to evangelization, we have an easier job than the Apostles - so why were they so successful, and we most of the time aren't? Answer: They spent time with our Lord, lots of time. Quick calculation: if they spent 3 years in the company of Jesus that's some 1095 days or 26,280 hours. If we spent our "one hour" in prayer (perhaps during a Holy Hour) once a week, it would take us some 500 years to have that kind of relationship. One hour a day is still 72 years. Folks: if we want to turn the culture to Christ we need to do some serious praying!
Now, don't think that I'm saying that evangelization is impossible, it's not, but I am trying to emphasis the importance of prayer in being successful at converting the world to Christ.
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