INTERCESSION

One of the most difficult questions to answer concerns the way prayer for the well-being of another often appears unanswered. A spouse might pray that their partner doesn’t die or a parent that their child be healed – after all, didn’t Jesus say: ‘I will do anything you ask in my name.’ (John 14.13). But the fact is that many do not find that Jesus does what they ask in prayers they offer. This is something people have grappled with for a long time and in The Mystery of Faith I gave some attention to that question in a number of places, including writing this in Chapter 11 (p.90):

‘Asking for something on behalf of another might be a natural response to a deeply felt need – ‘Oh God, let Mary get better!’ But if we’re going to ask someone for something, it’s best to be in a relationship with them. And when we bring our desires (supplications) to God, we need to trust that God will respond to them in the right way. Our heart might be overflowing with concerns, but we need to let go of them to God otherwise they can become overwhelming:

‘Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.’

Intercession isn’t about getting God to do what we want (no matter how good our intentions); it’s learning to open our hearts to God’s compassionate love, offering our concerns to Christ (because it’s he who prays for us) and then trusting him.’

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Many Christians have been led to believe that prayer concerns this matter of asking for things but were never taught of the importance of the context in which intercession is offered – without a context, intercession would seem little more than a ‘penny-in-the-slot’ affair: you offer the prayer and get what you ask for. But, if they thought about it, I imagine few would accept that understanding. If every prayer ‘in Jesus’ name’ were answered exactly as offered there’d be chaos! John might pray for a rainy day and Jill for a dry one; Pedro for Barcelona to win and Johannes for Berlin; Yuri might even pray for success in robbing a bank! But what about that prayer which is offered for the healing of a loved one? Surely, if there is a loving God such a request would be granted? Again, to quote from The Mystery (Chapter 6, p.51):

‘What to make of suffering
But if God is good why should there be suffering? Couldn’t God have created a world where people didn’t hurt each other, where Nature was kindly? The scriptures, especially the psalms, reveal ways in which people have grappled with suffering, even blaming, but always in dialogue with, God (e.g. 22). The Book of Job grapples with this: there you’ll find lament, complaint, accusation – but trust that God will not, in the end, abandon Job utterly. We touched on that in Ch.2, recognising that suffering is part of the mystery of life and can reveal depths of compassion we might not otherwise experience. …

Our forebears, wanting to help us connect our suffering with his, and to show just how much Christ suffered, often showed his wounds in graphic detail. You may have seen the famous 16th century Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald which the monks, who cared for victims of plague, placed in their hospital. I remember being deeply moved on kneeling before an ancient statue of the dead Christ and noticing how his body showed the signs of beating, blood pouring from wounds in his head, hands and feet, and knew that all pain and suffering was to be found here. …

What did God experience as Jesus hung there? God-in-Christ must have known immense suffering in order to fully share in this world-changing moment. Apart from the physical, emotional and spiritual suffering he saw the love of friends and the anguish of his mother – such deep anguish that only a mother can have for her child. He saw the absence of insight in some, the superficiality of others and lack of interest in the onlookers. He saw it all, and more – he saw the depth of his own Heart. Fear was there yet, beneath that and stronger than that, he saw love, love now darkly crowned. And, for one brief moment, he cried in the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27.46) … ‘

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Of course, some will say – ‘but if God is good, why didn’t he make a world without suffering?’ Others, as I wrote: ‘seeing so much injustice, pain and suffering, (will) decide that if God does exist then ‘he’ must be very evil to have created such monstrous things. But recognising such complexity Christianity knows that ‘evil’ must co-exist with ‘good’; what appear to be random, sometimes chaotic processes are indispensable if we’re to have the universe we know (and we can’t know any other). If things had been even slightly different, life probably couldn’t have emerged from primordial chaos.’ (Chapter 2, p.15)

It’s a sad fact that, without suffering we would never know the depths of compassion of which the heart is capable, never know what love is able to express – Christianity alone holds this paradox of life and suffering being intrinsically entwined, which is why the Crucified is central to our faith. The question, ‘why doesn’t God heal the one I love’ has no other answer apart from the image of the Crucified; again, to quote from The Mystery of Faith: ‘Here is our God-made-Man hanging on the Cross. Not an all-mighty, ever-powerful Lord but someone naked and vulnerable. That is the uniqueness of our faith – the God in whom we believe, the maker of heaven and earth, who was prepared to know what it is to be human, to be weak, frightened and lonely, just as you and I can be. That’s why people have been drawn to and by this moment. It’s what’s inspired great artists, writers, musicians and poets who identify with Jesus hanging, dying, on the cross’ (Ch. 6, p.58).

Living in a culture where we expect pain and suffering to be cured and where pills and treatments can suppressor even eradicate pain, it’s almost inevitable that we feel suffering, especially ‘innocent’ suffering, doesn’t belong in life. Many expect God to act like the ultimate doctor – but, reading the bible, that’s never been the view of people of faith. When people are taught about intercession it needs to be set in the context of trusting in the ultimate purposes of a God who seeks the good of all Creation. ‘Thy kingdom come; thy will be done’ needs to be the context in which our intercessions are offered. So, long before teaching about this matter of praying-for-healing, we need to understand and believe that God, who suffered and died for us, continues to suffer with us and is leading us to at-one-ness with Him. The Sacred Heart of Christ still bleeds for us but would also enfold us in His mercy and compassion. As a recent theologian has said:

‘To ask for something in Jesus’ name does not mean that we invoke him verbally and then desire

whatever our turbulent, divided heart or our appetite, our wretched mania for everything and anything, happens to hanker for. No, asking in Jesus’ name means entering into him, living by him, being one with him in love and faith. If he is in us by faith, in love, in grace, in his Spirit, then our petition arises from the centre of our being, which is himself, and if all our petition and desire is gathered up and fused in him and his Spirit, then the Father hears us. Then our petition becomes simple and straightforward, harmonious, sober, and unpretentious.

'Then what St. Paul says in the letter to the Romans applies to us: we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us, praying the one prayer, “Abba! Father”! He longs for that from which the Spirit and Jesus himself have proceeded: he longs for God, he asks God for God, on our behalf he asks of God. Everything is included and contained in this prayer. … [If we pray in this way] we shall see that God really answers our prayer, in one way or another. Then we shall no longer feel this “one way or the other” is a feeble excuse offered by the pious, and the gospel, for unanswered prayer.

'No. Our prayer is answered, but precisely because it is prayer in Jesus’ name; and what we ultimately pray for is for the Lord to grow in our lives, to fill our existence with himself, to triumph, to gather into one our scattered life, the thousand and one desires of which we are made. … To pray in Jesus’ name is to have one’s prayer answered, to receive God and God’s blessing, and then, even amid tears, even in pain, even in indigence, even when it seems that one has still not been heard, the heart rests in God, and that is—while we are still here on pilgrimage, far from the Lord—perfect joy.' (Fr. Karl Rahner SJ)