During prayer, do you sometimes get distracted? Or have difficulty? Pope Francis says persevere, “even if prayer is not a ‘walk in the park,'” because God is always at your side. Moreover, during his first weekly General Audience this year with some faithful in the Vatican’s San Damaso Courtyard, he told at least 300 socially-distanced, masked faithful, that “prayer works miracles” and that God, with his tenderness, “is at our side ready to help us like a father.”
In recent months, the General Audiences were held without faithful and streamed privately from the Pontiff’s Apostolic Library as Italy continues to battle coronavirus and its variants. Even as the nation began to lift some restrictions, many limitations remained in place across the country.
Today, the Pope continued his series of catecheses on prayer, this week speaking about “spiritual combat.”
“The great spiritual masters recognize that prayer is not always easy, for our human nature is frequently distracted or tempted by seemingly more important priorities. The Catechism teaches that prayer, although a free and unmerited gift of God’s grace, can be affected by our human experiences of discouragement, sadness or disappointment.”
Recognizing many of the saints experienced long periods of spiritual dryness and even darkness, he said they teach us “that the only response to these temptations is greater perseverance.” Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuit Pope noted, uses military imagery to stress the importance of discipline in our efforts to serve under the banner of Christ.
“Saint Anthony learned from his harsh spiritual battles in the desert that although God may at times seem absent amid these struggles, he remains always at our side,” Francis said, praying that “in our daily efforts to persevere in prayer may we trust that our own spiritual combat, will bear fruit in a deeper and more mature relationship with the Lord.”
Christian prayer, like all Christian life, the Argentine Pontiff admitted, is not a “walk in the park”.
“None of the great people of prayer we meet in the Bible and in the history of the Church found prayer “comfortable”. Yes, one can pray like a parrot – blah, blah, blah, blah, blah – but that is not prayer. Prayer certainly gives great peace, but through inner struggle, at times hard, which can accompany even long periods of life.”
Praying, he acknowledged, is not something easy, and this is why we flee from it.
“Every time we want to pray, we are immediately reminded of many other activities, which at that moment seem more important and more urgent. This happens to me too! It happens to me. I go to pray a little … and no, I must do this and that… We flee from prayer, I don’t know why, but that is how it is. Almost always, after putting off prayer, we realise that those things were not essential at all, and that we may have wasted time. This is how the Enemy deceives us.”
In times of trial, the Pope said, it is good to remember that we are not alone, that someone is watching over us and protecting us. Very often, he noted, prayer is combat, and remember something “I experienced close up, when I was in the other diocese.”
“There was a married couple with a daughter age nine, with an illness that the doctors were unable to diagnose,” he recalled, noting !in the end, in hospital, the doctor said to the mother, “Madam, call your husband”. And the husband was at work; they were labourers, they worked every day. And he said to the father, “The child will not survive the night. There is nothing we can do to stop this infection”. Perhaps that man did not attend Mass every Sunday, but he had great faith. He left, weeping.”
Francis noted how he left his wife there with the child in the hospital, he took the train and he travelled seventy kilometers towards the Basilica of Our Lady of Luján, Patroness of Argentina. The Basilica was already closed, being almost ten o’clock at night, in the evening. Regardless, he clung to the grates of the Basilica and spent all night praying to Our Lady, fighting for his daughter’s health.
“This is not a figment of the imagination: I saw him! I saw him myself,” Francis said. “That man there, fighting. At the end, at six o’clock in the morning, the Church opened, he entered to salute Our Lady, and returned home. And he thought: “She has left us. No, Our Lady cannot do this to me”. Then he went to see [his wife], and she was smiling, saying: “I don’t know what happened. The doctors said that something changed, and now she is cured”.
That man, fighting with prayer, received the grace of Our Lady, Francis said, illustrating: “Our Lady listened to him.”
“And I saw this: prayer works miracles, because prayer goes directly to the heart of the tenderness of God, who cares for us like a father, the Pope said, noting that when He does not grant us a grace, He will grant us another which in time we will see.”
“But always,” the Pontiff insisted, persist in prayer to ask for grace. “Prayer is combat, and the Lord is always with us.”
At the end of our lives, looking back–Francis said–we too, like the patriarch Jacob in Genesis, will be able to say: “I thought I was alone, but no, I was not: Jesus was with me.”
Pope Francis concluded, reminding: “We will all be able to say this. Thank you.”
Tickets were not required for faithful at the audience. The Holy Father greeted the crowds and expressed in his remarks how much he missed being among the people. “I am happy to resume this face-to-face meeting, because I will tell you something: it is not nice to speak in front of nothing, to a camera. It is not nice,” Francis expressed.
“Thank you for your presence and your visit. Take the Pope’s message to everyone. The Pope’s message is that I pray for everyone, and I ask you to pray for me, united in prayer,” he said.
Greeting English-speaking pilgrims and visitors, the Pope said: “As we prepare to celebrate the Ascension of the Lord, I invoke upon you and your families the peace and joy that come from the risen Christ. May God bless you!”
