Intercession, Anxiety, and Cultivated Misery

 

"Dominican Youth praying the Rosary in Lourdes" by Lawrence OP is licensed under

Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God will listen to your prayer. 

      -- St. Padre Pio

When I was younger, I was really vulnerable to the mindset that bad things happen in the world because good people don't pray hard enough. 

The fact that I struggled with this probably has something to do with my scruples. I remember many anxious Rosaries, with me struggling to say each and every Hail Mary with the right amount of pious sincerity and starring over when I felt I didn't accomplish it. My dad deployed to Iraq during that war; part of me was convinced that if I wasn't praying hard and often enough, he wouldn't come home. 

With the perpetual emergence of "what the heck" in the news cycle, I'm fairly confident a lot of people are also struggling with this. There are whole YouTube channels devoted to anxiously discussing Marian apparitions where, according to the presenters, Mary basically informed the world it was being held hostage and would be utterly destroyed if a Rosary quota wasn't met.  "I gotta have those Hail Marys, see? Or the world gets the apocalypse." 

That's not what she was saying. 

Here's the thing though...I don't think intercessory prayer necessitates anxious misery.  

I'm not saying that it's a sin to be a little anxious about the thing you're praying about. The anxiety is usually what prompted the prayer in the first place, and that's ok. 

 I am saying that willfully cultivating that anxiety, or feeling like you have to remain in a state of anxious sincerity all day, isn't needed and is probably actually harmful. 

God has told us we have the ability and responsibility to pray for one another, and that the prayers we offer have real effects and can actually help other people get to heaven. All that is true  

He also created free will, doesn't usually let people in on the details of His plans, and asked us to trust him, "like little children." 

I'm honestly still figuring out how to approach God in a spirit of love rather than fear, and I don't pretend to have it all figured out. There's still areas that I'm not sure how to restructure, though I'm working on it. 

But I am fairly convicted about this. We can't control anything. We can't bribe or cajole God to do anything. He listens to our prayers and we can win grace for others through them, but we can't control exactly how God will use those graces, or whether a certain person or group of people will choose to accept them. How sincerely or piously we say that Rosary, or how often we say it, won't change that. 

So yes, pray. Pray for Ukraine, pray for those suffering, pray for conversion, pray for an end to the virus. God has asked us to do this, and when we do it, there are real graces granted to us and the people we pray for. All that is true. 

But then, after you pray, live your life. Play with your children, dig your garden, start on that new project. You've brought your intention to God, and you've done the best you can to love others through prayer as He's asked you too. Trust Him with this, and let Him take it from here. 

He's going to take care of it, whether you're thinking about it all the time or not.