Please and Thank You: Two Ways to Pray

During the month of November, many Catholics of the Archdiocese send me cards with requests for prayers. Thousands of these cards and their requests remain in the chapel in my residence, and each day I try to read through some of them and shape my prayer to include the needs described on the cards.

Prayers are requested for loved ones who have died and for others facing surgery or wrestling with depression. Many are concerned about loneliness, about growing older and weaker, about the breakup of families or about children who no longer practice the Catholic faith. Some pray for more priests to serve our Archdiocese and an increase in vocations to the consecrated life. Others ask for a definitive solution to the sex abuse crisis and for justice for all concerned. A constant petition is for peace in the world and that the Lord will keep safe our troops in Iraq. Many of you, even as you ask that I pray for your intentions, assure me that you are continuing to pray for my health and recovery from surgery. I am deeply moved by these cards and by your solidarity in prayer. I am grateful to know the desires you have shared, because a primary duty of a bishop or a priest is to pray for the people the Lord has given him to love and pastor.

Usually the priest at Mass takes the reading of the Gospel, the third of the Scripture readings, as his base text for the homily; but the second of the Sunday readings in recent weeks merits special attention. It has been taken from the Letter to the Hebrews, a text whose principal theme is the priesthood of Jesus. The Letter begins with a strong affirmation of the divinity of Jesus. God has spoken in many and fragmentary ways through the prophets, but he has, in Christ, spoken to us through his Son. This Son is the “reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb 1:3), the one who “sustains all things by his powerful word.”

The second chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews is an equally strong affirmation of Jesus’ humanity. Jesus had been, for a time, made less than the angels, becoming subject to pain, even to the point of “tasting death for everyone” (Heb 2:9). Jesus was “made perfect through suffering” and “became like his brothers and sisters in every respect” (Heb 2:17). This coming together of lordliness and lowliness in Jesus makes him “a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people” (Heb 2:17-18). Because Jesus is true God and true man, he is the perfect reconciler, the great High Priest whose self-sacrifice and prayers unite God, his father, and the human beings with whom he has cast his lot.

One way to pray, to bring together God and ourselves, is to ask for what our hearts desire, trusting all that we hope for to God’s will for our salvation. Your cards are evidence of this way of praying. The prayers of Jesus and of his Church are often prayers of petition. Turning to God, we say “please.” At the end of this month of November, however, we turn to God with another sort of prayer. We say “thank you,” because gratitude is another way of linking our lives to God.

Speaking recently about giving thanks to God, Pope Benedict XVI mentioned that, in families, little ones are taught “to thank the Lord always before eating, with a brief prayer and the sign of the cross. This custom must be kept or rediscovered, because it teaches us not to take our ‘daily bread’ for granted but to recognize in it a gift of Providence.” The Holy Father continued, “We should get into the habit of blessing the Creator for each thing: for air and water, precious elements which are the foundation of life on our planet, as well as for food that, through the fecundity of the earth, God gives us for our sustenance.”

We make this prayer of thanksgiving at meals especially on Thanksgiving Day, when we thank the Lord for all that he has given us as a family and a nation. Just as we make our desires explicit in prayers of petition, so also we bring every element of our lives to mind and voice in prayers of thanksgiving. Desire and gratitude, petition and thanksgiving, are two ways of uniting ourselves to God in prayer.

Along with our prayers for one another and for our own families, let us ask the Lord to protect Pope Benedict during his trip to Turkey from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1, and let us also thank God for the Holy Father’s priestly ministry at the service of the Church’s unity.

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