The power of prayer
On the bright street outside Holy Name Cathedral, the air was thick, hot and oppressive.
Inside, it was cool, dim and comfortable. Only a few people were scattered throughout the huge church, but the sense was one of prayerful solitude. I found a pew off to the side and sat for a few minutes, enjoying the respite from the heat and from the rush of the day.
Later that day—the day of Cardinal George’s first surgery for bladder cancer—the cathedral would become a busier place. Later, there would be songs and prayers for his recovery, for the skill of the doctors and other health professionals.
But now it was quiet. The cardinal hadn’t even yet been wheeled out of the operating room, the TV station trucks and other media hadn’t yet arrived at the cathedral and the series of all-night prayer services wouldn’t begin for several hours.
Even so, the coolness of the cathedral was a calming nexus of hope and prayer.
Certainly the few people who populated its pews that stifling afternoon seemed to understand instinctively the connection they had to God, to each other and to the cardinal archbishop of Chicago.
Later, perhaps, when the “official” prayer services got under way, there would be acknowledgment of that connection. But it was clear even then.
We pray for one another—or we should—because we are joined together, turning to God in need. That’s “community.” The cardinal wrote about that aspect of his illness and impending surgeries in his column for this issue. See Page 3.
Following his two surgeries for bladder cancer, Cardinal George said he “felt” the prayers people were offering for him, not just at Holy Name Cathedral, of course, but in parishes and homes all over.
His Jesuit physician, Dr. Myles Sheehan, agreed during one press briefing on the cardinal’s condition that prayer and medicine aren’t strangers. They certainly aren’t in opposition to one another. “I pray the rosary,” he said. “And I use antibiotics.”
There were no antibiotics in that dim cathedral on the day of the cardinal’s operation. But there were rosaries and there was prayer.
Neither prayer nor medicine is powerless; neither is exclusive. And both rejoiced at the good news July 31 that following the surgery there was no sign of cancer remaining in the cardinal.
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Do no cents make good sense?
There’s been another effort to lighten your pockets of small change, and I don’t mean more higher gas prices.
It’s the penny, that ubiquitous one-cent coin that’s been a staple of the American scene since, well, even before there was an America. But now that it costs Uncle Sam 1.4 cents to produce a penny, Rep. Jim Kolbe has proposed doing away with the coin. If he succeeds, which is unlikely, I have a suggestion.
The Arizona Republican would round off all sales, either up or down, to the nearest nickel. The mint would save money, your pockets wouldn’t bulge so and church ushers would no longer have to sort those little brown coins from the collection basket and count them.
Efforts to kill the penny have been unsuccessful before and there’s no reason to expect anything’s different this time. But if it works, there’ll be a lot of “orphan” pennies floating around.
I claim dibs.
Here’s the suggestion: Get them out of circulation; send them here. Not for me, you understand, but for a one-time shot to help Catholic schools. Hey, since we don’t use them much anyway, there must be billions of dollars stuffed in penny jars everywhere. You’ll feel better, the schools will gain. And even Rep. Kolbe will be happy.
