Pope Francis reflects on “prayer of intercession” during his weekly General Audience.
By Christopher Wells
Continuing his catechesis on prayer, Pope Francis focused on “intercessory prayer” on Wednesday; that is, the prayer he asks for in the name of another ”.
Those who are accustomed to pray, said Pope Francis, “never turn their backs on the world.” If prayer is not related to all aspects of human existence – its joys and sorrows, its hopes and anxieties – it becomes a “decorative” activity.
Bread, broken and shared
The Pope noted a similarity between those who pray for others and Christ in the Eucharist. “In prayer,” he said, “God ‘takes us, blesses us, breaks us, and gives us’ to satisfy the hunger of all.” He added that every Christian “is called to become bread, broken and shared, in the hands of God.”
Men and women of prayer, the Pope said, always “keep the doors of the heart open,” even when they seek solitude and silence. They pray for those who do not pray or do not know how to pray, as well as for those who “have erred and lost their way.” In their loneliness, those who pray “separate from everything and everyone” precisely to “rediscover everything and everyone in God.”
Praying for everyone
The Pope said these people “pray for each and every person,” they see “the face of Christ in all the poor knocking at the door, in every person who has lost his sense of things.”
Prayer is “simply human,” Pope Francis said. “The human heart tends toward prayer.” But prayer necessarily implies love for our brothers and sisters. The human experience, the Pope said, “is present in all prayers, because, regardless of the mistakes people have made, they should never be rejected or discarded.”
Neither the trial nor the conviction
Pope Francis insisted that when those who pray offer prayers for sinners, there must be no judgment or condemnation: those who pray, pray for all and, first and foremost, for themselves. The Holy Father suggested, for the same reason, a prayer that all may pray: “Lord, no one is alone in your sight; we are all debtors, each with a balance outstanding; no one has sin in your eyes. Lord, have mercy on us! “
The Pope continued, noting that, despite the sins of his people, God remains faithful, persevering “in his pastoral service even with those who force him to get his hands dirty; He does not close his heart to those who have even made him suffer.
An intercessory prayer mission
The Church, too, said Pope Francis, “has the mission of practicing the prayer of intercession” – and this duty belongs especially to those who have the responsibility of others. “Like Abraham and Moses,” he said, “sometimes they must” defend “those who have been entrusted to them before God.”
In fact, the Pope said that in praying to God, they “guarded them with the eyes and heart of God, with their own invincible compassion and tenderness.”
Leaves on the same tree
“We are all leaves of the same tree,” the Pope concluded. “Everyone who falls reminds us of the great piety that must be nurtured in prayer for one another.”