“Pray for us” (Hebrews 13:18). That request, in one form or another, occurs hundreds of times in the Bible. It occurs even more times on our answering machine and e-mail inbox! We write the intentions down and post them where all the brothers can see them; they cover an entire wall in one of our buildings. People need to know that someone is praying for them, that someone is bringing their needs before the face of God. Not only does this knowledge bring hope that God in his mercy will actually meet their needs, but it also brings, in the meantime, a sense of peace and consolation, a sense that things are going to be OK. It makes it easier for them to go on living with courage.
A long time ago, when I was just a teenager (yes, I actually was that young once), I received a solicitation in the mail from some monastic community. If I would send them a donation, they would remember me in their prayers. I summarily tossed it out. But not much later I experienced a series of unfortunate turns of events, and I thought to myself: If only I’d sent a few bucks to those darn monks, maybe things wouldn’t be going so badly now! This is not a commentary on the relation (if there is one) between sending donations to monks and avoiding disasters, but rather on the somewhat inarticulate but real awareness that many people have of the peace and blessing that come from being conscious of someone praying for them, especially someone who has been specially consecrated for this ministry. People often let us know, even without referring to specific blessings, how grateful they are that we are here doing what we do.
Prayer is the ministry of monks. All Christians are called to pray, but monks are called to pray as a way of
life. We spend hours a day in prayer, in community and in solitude. Part of our prayer is offering worship and thanksgiving to God. Another part is devoted to repentance, to our personal and communal needs, and to quietly and humbly walking with our God. All the rest is for you.
Scripture says, “Pray for one another,” because “the prayer of the righteous has great power in its effects” (James 5:16). We have no time for “navel-gazing” or narcissistic spiritual thrill-seeking. Our mission is to intercede for you; this is one of the main functions of monks in the Body of Christ. Allow me give a few examples of the way we bring you and your needs to God.
The priest-monks pray for you in the Liturgy of Preparation that precedes the Divine Liturgy, the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. After cutting and lifting out, with prayers, the center portion of the altar bread (called the “Lamb”), commemorations are made for the Mother of God and various orders of saints. Commemorations are also made for the living and the dead. Here is where we cut a particle of bread in your name to be offered to God as we consecrate the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
We also light candles for you and place them before the icons of Christ and the Mother of God. Christ Himself is the Light of the world, and St John reminds us that “the light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it” (John 1:5). So a candle is a sign of hope, a symbol of Christ the Light, and we stand in fervent prayer like candles burning in the presence of God. In the Book of Revelation, the Son of Man stood and walked amidst the golden lampstands, which symbolize the praying churches (1:12-13).
During the Divine Office, after the prescribed intentions of the litanies (for peace, for the sick, the imprisoned, the travelers, etc), it is our custom to add our own petitions for current specific needs. Thus we include you and your intentions in the official prayer of the Church. We also bring you into our individual intercessory prayer, in our monastic cells or wherever we may be, offered silently on the altar of our hearts. We are here to bring you and your loved ones into the healing and loving presence of the merciful and all-powerful God. And even if personal limitations or time constraints sometimes prevent us from praying as much (or in as detailed a manner) as we would like, we still can offer prayers like this (from the Liturgy of St Basil):
“…and those we have omitted through ignorance or forgetfulness or because of the multitude of their names, You Yourself remember, O God, who know the name and age of each, who have known each one from his mother’s womb. For You, O Lord, are the Helper of the helpless, the Hope of the desperate, the Savior of the tempest-tossed, the Harbor of voyagers, the Physician of the sick: become all things to all, O You who know each one and his need, each house and its necessity…”
One of the great moments of imploring the Lord’s mercy for the whole world occurs during the liturgical elevation of the cross on the feast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross on September 14. (See my post a few days back.) We bless the four directions of the earth and pray “Lord, have mercy” 500 times! As our Fr Bartholomew (of blessed memory) used to say: if the Lord doesn’t have mercy, it won’t be because we didn’t ask!
When one enters a monastery, he does not (or should not) do so as a means of fleeing the world and its responsibilities. For he soon discovers that he has been given a much heavier responsibility, one that embraces all the anguished cries and silent supplications of a world torn by sin and suffering. The monk, as intercessor, finds that he has not simply left a family behind (along with the possibility of creating a new one of his own), but has gained a whole world of brothers and sisters—to whom he is now responsible!
It goes something like this: a monk may not have among his relatives or friends someone who is suffering from, say, cancer. But he must pray for all such sufferers as if they were his loved ones—because in Christ they are. He may not personally know anyone who is starving or homeless or displaced by war, but he must intercede for them all as his own. He may not be unemployed, injured, or bereaved, but he takes all such persons lovingly into his prayer. There is always someone who needs our prayer.
Pastor Wurmbrand, who suffered many years for Christ in communist prisons in Romania, and who worked tirelessly for others in similar situations after his release, was told some years later that since the fall of the iron curtain, there were much fewer people imprisoned and tortured for their faith. He said, “I don’t know if there are in prison two million or two. It doesn’t matter. If there is even one, it’s me!” Such was his identification with those who were suffering. This is the kind of identification an intercessor is called to make.
Intercession has a prophetic character as well, not in the sense of foreknowing the outcome of the prayer, but in being a means that God has chosen to manifest and accomplish his will. In the Old Testament, from Moses to Ezekiel, the Lord has called his chosen ones to be a sign to the people, to manifest his power and his merciful, steadfast love. Moses stood on the mountain, arms outstretched in prayer, as the Israelites fought in the valley below (Exodus 17:8-13). As long as he kept his arms up, the battle went favorably, but if he let them down, the battle turned against his people. (My sister once wrote me, encouraging me to continue praying for my family, noting that “we can tell when you’re slacking off.” With renewed fervor I raised my arms in prayer!) Moses also pleaded—more than once—on behalf of his people when they sinned, that God would not destroy them in his righteous anger.
The mystery of intercession seems to be built into God’s will for the way He wishes to deal with his people. When the Lord God saw extortion, robbery, and oppression in the land, He “sought for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before Me, for the land, that I should not destroy it” (Ezekiel 22:29-31). He was looking for someone to intercede for the people, so they would not be destroyed as their sins deserved. God would have relented and forgiven them if He had found someone who would stand in prayer for them. But He found no one, so He let loose his wrath.
To be continued…
Making All Things New 