Don’t Be Afraid. Pray.

When you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you. Jesus Christ

God breathed the universe into existence with a single breath that we call the Big Bang. Before that, there was nothing at all. Time itself did not exist. 

The creative force that is God is far beyond our comprehension. It is a miracle that I cannot explain that He made us in His Image and Likeness and endowed us with minds that are capable of unraveling the mysteries of how this universe He made is put together. 

Because we are made in His Image, we are free moral agents. We are not doomed to actions bound by instinct and unchanging reaction. We can advance our science and technology by using our brains and building on the work of previous generations. 

Alone of all the creatures on this incredible planet, we can know the moral meaning of our actions, and we can decide what we will do.

But what defies comprehension is that we can also experience a relationship with God Himself. 

We have been given the enormous privilege of speaking to God. We can know His working in our lives through the Holy Spirit. We can pray. 

Prayer is not just a jingoistic set piece that we recite before meals. It is quite a bit more than the one-word exclamations of the Holy Name that we cry out as our car crashes, the waters rise, or home invaders burst through the front door. 

God knows what we mean when we cry out His name at the breakpoints in our lives. He understands and hears every complicated and desperate meaning that we put into those one word exclamations. 

Prayer is simple. Prayer is a privilege. Prayer is a gift. Prayer is a conversation between us and the God Who created everything. 

Think about that. The God Who made the universe and whatever lies beyond it is interested in us as individuals. That is a preposterous idea. It sounds like delusional gibberish. 

Here we are, stuck on a little planet at the edge of a galaxy that is one of more galaxies than we can know, a galaxy that is itself on the edge of a universe that we cannot measure. And we claim that we can speak to the God Who exploded existence itself into existence with a single breath. 

That claim is preposterous. 

Except it’s not. 

God, whose power would be more terrifying than terror if we actually glimpsed it, has come to us in manifestations of Himself that we can understand and interact with. He become Human and walked among us and allowed Himself to be murdered by us for our redemption. He came again as a Spirit that instructs and, yes, communicates with us. 

Nothing about us is hidden from God. He knows that we are dust. Long before our science verified it, He knew that our very being is made of the chemicals that make up this Earth. We are the dust of the Earth in a literal as well as a metaphorical sense. 

He raised us up from dirt of the Earth, put the oceans in our arteries, and then breathed on us the breath of immortality. He gave us our lives as a free gift to do with as we choose. 

He gave us minds and hearts that can unravel the secrets of His creation, that can sense His presence and that long for Him all our days. 

Then, He gave us prayer. We cry out for Him and He answers. 

The faith-deniers who mock prayer are onto something. Us, communicating with God, is a preposterous thing. But it is real. Prayer is real. God is real. We are real. It is all true. 

We can pray and we can talk to God. We can cry out “God!” in our moments of extremity and know that He hears. We can talk to Him. He is, as Scripture tells us, “a very present help in times of trouble.” 

A number of people have expressed to me how frightened they are right now.

There is only one solution for the terror and rage of these days. We need to pray. 

We need to go apart from everyone and open our hearts to the Almighty God Who made us, and pray. We need to go to God like small children, climbing in bed with their parents after a nightmare. 

The only things that are required for effective prayer are honesty and humility. 

Prayer is a miracle and a gift of love. I know from experience that if you ask God for courage, you will feel the calm and courage pour into you. If you ask Him for the peace that passes all understanding, the calm and security will fill you. 

He will clear your mind and give you resolve. He will remove the blinders of demagoguery, manipulation and brain washing and set you free to see, hear, think and decide like the free moral agent you are. 

Prayer is a gift and a privilege. Prayer is a manifestation of God’s love. It is not a tool of our ambitions.

Pray during these frightening times. 

Ask for courage, and He will give it to you.

Pray honestly and trust Him. If you will do that, He will clear your mind. 

We are living in what may turn out to be historic times.

Go off alone. Sit with Jesus in the Eucharist. Or do as Jesus said and go to your room at home. And pray.