Overcoming Discouragement in Prayer – 10.16.22 (29th Sunday OT- C)

“Overcoming Discouragement in Prayer”

By: Fr. David Schmidt

St. John Paul II Shrine- Washington, DC

 Mass Readings- https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101622.cfm

I think one of the reasons why many people struggle with praying is that prayer can be pretty discouraging at times. We often don’t see results right away, if ever, and this can lead us to wonder if our prayer is even working.

Today’s readings offer encouragement for us that our prayers are effective and to never give up praying.

In the first reading, we hear about the story of Moses and Joshua engaging in battle against Amalek. Moses tells Joshua to pick men out to go and fight the battle, while Moses goes up to the top of the hill and raises his arms as a means to intercede for Joshua as he is engaged in battle. We see that “As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight.”

When Moses got tired, he didn’t give up and stop. He also didn’t try to continue to do it on his own. He used the help of Aaron and Hur, who found him a rock for him to sit on, and then helped support his arms to keep his arms raised in the air until the battle was over which Israel ended up winning.

When we intercede for others in prayer, our prayers work, as Moses’ prayers worked in the battle. We must never stop interceding for others in prayer. At times it might not look like our prayers are doing anything, but we have no idea the power that our prayers are having.

You might be praying for someone in your life to come back to the faith, but they seem to be further away than ever. Or maybe you’re praying for world events, and everything just seems to be getting worse. When we don’t see results right away, we are tempted to stop because we start to think, “What’s the point? My prayers aren’t doing anything.”

We must not believe this lie. Our prayers have a much more powerful effect than we can ever imagine. You never know how a small little prayer is helping someone in a given situation. Or how our prayers for someone over a period of years, is what finally allowed grace to penetrate their heart to convert back to the faith. We are all fighting in a spiritual battle, and we have no idea how powerful our prayers are in helping one another fight their battles.

Even a quick Hail Mary or Our Father for someone can have a powerful effect. I remember a priest one time telling a story of someone who was jogging through a neighborhood, and they noticed an ambulance at someone’s house. The person offered a quick Hail Mary for the person and continued jogging without thinking much of it. Some days later the person was jogging through the neighborhood again and heard someone calling, but since he doesn’t know anyone there, he just kept running. Until finally, he realized they were trying to get his attention, so he stops, and this person comes to him and says that they wanted to thank him for his prayers. Then she begins to tell him that she was the one whom the ambulance was picking up, and as she was at the point of death, she had this vision of the Lord who said to her, “You were going to die, but because of the prayers of this man (and He showed a picture of him) you will live.”

Rarely, if ever, are we going to have this type of opportunity to know the effects of even one simple Hail Mary or Our Father that we pray for someone. We often times pray for people and situations that we never know the end result of. We also don’t know how many little miracles in our hearts and in our lives that have occurred because of the prayers of others.

God doesn’t want us to worry so much about seeing the results. He just wants us to pray with faith. This is why at the end of the Gospel He asks, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

In the Gospel with the persistent widow, her requests were finally answered by the unjust judge do to her persistence. Our persistence in prayer reveals our faith. We never stop praying because we have faith that God hears our prayers and that He is working, even if we can’t see what He’s up too.

God wants us to grow in perseverance in our prayer because He wants us to grow in faith. The greater the faith we have, the more God is able to do in our lives.

Now, when we hear that 1st reading about Moses interceding during the battle, we may wonder why God didn’t just defeat Amalek on His own instead of relying on the intercessory prayer of Moses to work in the battle? We may wonder about the same thing in our own lives. Why does God choose to use my intercessory prayer to act in a powerful way instead of just doing it on his own without my help?

We know that God doesn’t need us in order to be able to act in a situation, but He has chosen to do this in this way because the whole process of praying to God enables us to grow and mature as Christians. It enables to grow in holiness, love, virtue, and sanctity. God is not so much worried about the result of our prayer as much as He is about how prayer changes us and helps us grow.

When we actively pray for others, it is an act of love. The more we pray for others, the more we grow in the virtue of love. When we persevere in our prayer, it is an act of faith. The more perseverance we exhibit, the more we grow in the virtue of faith.

When we find ourselves becoming discouraged in our prayer, let us remember that God does hear our prayers and that our prayers are powerful and that they make a difference. God is so eager to hear and answer our prayers. He is always listening and ready to answer the prayers of His children. Perhaps we may never know the results of the majority of our prayers here on earth. But I can guarantee that when we are in heaven all will be revealed. We will meet people whose souls were saved because of our prayers. We will meet people who will thank us for our prayers during a struggle they were having in their life. We will also meet the people who prayed for us, and because of their prayers, we received incredible graces and blessings throughout our lives.

So let us never give up hope in our prayer. Let us not become discouraged, but instead continue to pray with faith and always trust that God is at work in our lives, and that our prayers really do make a difference.