… or, The Gentle Art of Keeping Your Prayers to Yourself
Jesus’ best known advice on prayer is to keep it to yourself. He told his disciples, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven…. Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:1, 6).
This pastoral counsel starts off chapter six of Matthew, but it’s important to remember that the Bible wasn’t written in chapter and verse. Breaks in the text were added centuries later for reference purposes. When read in context with Jesus’ immediate prior remarks in chapter five, what do we find? We find Jesus’ advice for how to love one’s enemies.
If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:46–48).
Imagine, if you will, if the more or less arbitrary chapter breaks in Matthew shifted just a bit. We might see Jesus counseling his followers on the danger of praying for your enemies by practicing your piety in front of them.
It’s become almost a reflex in some circles for Christians to tell people they hate, “I’ll pray for you”—a pledge received by its recipients with all of the toxic sugar of a genteel Southern lady’s “Bless your heart.” Not only does the evident condescension rankle, but recipients of such pledges can’t help but suspect that the words are entirely empty. If I merited even a single bead on the rosary of all of the conservative Catholics of the past few years who told me they’d pray for me in response to my “coming out” as religiously progressive and politically liberal, I’d have more Hail Marys ascending to heaven for me than the Pope.
Let’s just say I doubt that I’ve been “covered in prayer.”
Telling someone you’ll pray for them when you have no intention of doing so is the very definition of the public piety Jesus condemned. It’s performative piety, done for likes and retweets re-Xes (?), and those who offer to pray without delivering on those prayers have their reward. And possibly their future project for getting out of purgatory.
But there’s another way in which the More Pious Than Thou use performative piety against their enemies. And it’s not done for their enemies’ benefit, but for avoiding personal responsibility for their actions.
In Blue Springs, Missouri, a city not far from the Show-Me State’s Kansas City, a Catholic family recently received devastating news. Melinda Henneberger, writing for the Kansas City Star, explains what happened.
Will Muller, a rising sixth grader at St. John LaLande Catholic School in Blue Springs, has been kicked out—”disenrolled” after much prayer, according to a July 19 letter from the principal, Susan Martin….
According to the letter, he’s being expelled because his parents, Paul and Hollee Muller, have “stated both verbally and in writing you do not agree with nor do you support the teachings of the Catholic Church. After prayerful consideration and discussion among our school administration it is obvious we no longer have a partnership with you, since the values of your family are not in alignment with those of our school. Therefore, the school administration has made the decision to disenroll your child from our school.”
According to the family, problems began when a new priest was assigned to pastor the parish that operates the school. Fr. Sean McCaffery “came rolling in hot,” according to Hollee Muller, pulling books from the school’s library and suppressing learning resources, such a language app and a news site. Ms. Muller also noted that she was one of several who objected to a teacher at the school telling a class that “girls who wear leggings might leave the impression that they are ‘whores.'”
Henneberger notes, in what reads as an aside, that the parish does require that families sign a “covenant” (don’t get me started on that term of art for this kind of agreement) that they will uphold the Church’s teachings, and that Hollee Muller stated she doesn’t agree with everything the Church teaches. But were Muller’s personal opinions creating strife in the parish? Or did her opinions become a handy justification for removing someone objecting to actions undertaken by the pastor and a teacher?
Oh, and let’s not overlook that the Mullers’ son has grave food allergies, which had been accommodated by the school and its families: “The decision has put Will, who has a life-threatening peanut and other serious food allergies that everyone at St. John accommodated, at greater physical risk in a new place where he knows no one.”
And yet the principal, in justifying the decision to disenroll a child who was thriving in this school and hadn’t done anything objectionable, stated that removing the child was done “after prayerful consideration.” Which, to me, sounds like another way of saying, “God approves of this message.”
No Christian would deny the importance of prayer in discernment, even in difficult situations in which the decisions reached may disrupt lives and create hard feelings. That doesn’t mean you have to announce that you’ve prayed. No one needs to hear that you are doing the thing you do because you believe God wants you to take that course of action. Take responsibility for your own decisions.
Hey, we’re all Christians here, you may be saying. Surely a fellow Christian will want to know that we took this situation very seriously, so seriously that we sought God’s input! No, I can assure you that a fellow Christian has no blessings to give for your godly discernment process when it ends with you tying weights around any crosses he must carry. But, yes, there are ways to bring God into the conversation.
Maintain silence. Jesus recommended keeping conversations between you and God between you and God. If you and your fellow Christian deciders prayed at the start of a meeting devoted to discussing how to deal with a tricky pastoral problem, no one needs to know about that except the secretary recording the minutes. If you are the sole Decider, you can trust that your Father in heaven knows you prayed for discernment.
Alleviate burdens. Jesus also had harsh words for the righteous who make others’ lives harsher. “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them” (Matt. 23:4). If you have to do something that you can reasonably foresee will cause someone else difficulty, offer help. Asking for suggestions of reasonable accommodations, granting time to act (especially in complicated situations), and checking in to see if further help is needed are all ways to help others carry a cross.
Show mercy. This really should be the first step, but it’s all too often the last thing many of the performative pietists consider. More often than not, you don’t have to do something you know will cause hardship to someone else. You don’t have to kick out a child because you got in an argument with his parents. In many cases, you don’t have to fire someone from a job because they don’t live up to the Christian moral code in their private life. If some other solution will suffice and preserve a relationship, such as transfer to a less visible position in the community for someone visibly at odds with Catholic moral teaching, that should be attempted first.
Admit and correct mistakes. If it turns out that you made a wrong decision, if you sinned against another person, then you own up to it. If you’re a Catholic, you repent, confess, and do penance. When sin causes harms, you do your best to make restitution, however inconvenient or embarrassing that may be. Period.
If you’ve done all this, then you won’t need to preface announcements with “after prayerful consideration.” Your Christian commitment will be apparent to all.
(Image: Woman, praying; Pixabay.)
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