As I have been following Dynamic Catholic’s “Prayer Process” for several weeks, the focus of each week’s direction has been very much interior in nature. The weeks’ thoughts have been about what goes on inside of me, and in my personal dialogue with God. While others were not excluded from those moments of thought and prayer, now we see directly the place of others in our lives, in our life of prayer.
Who people are, how they figure into our lives, and particularly how they figure into our lives of prayer is essential to the fullness and richness of our own lives. The invitation to each of us is to sense in every way how we figure into the fullness and richness of their lives.
We might be inclined, in certain circumstances, to offer the pledge that we are praying for them. This can happen especially when the challenge or burden they are enduring seems well beyond our ability to address or to be of help. The “Prayer Process” calls us to be a people who remember others in prayer as a faithfilled and faithful practice of our daily lives in Christ. Certainly, the particularly difficult moments in other peoples’ lives can prompt this response readily. What is suggested is that this posture of prayerful intercession for others is to be prompted by our faith as much as by other peoples’ circumstances.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is our Priest, Prophet and King. He is our Priest, who conforms us in Baptism to His Priesthood. The Holy Spirit has configured me, as an ordained priest, to this priestly role of prayer, of intercession, of praise and thanksgiving, of uncovering the Sacred where the Spirit reveals, of blessing to make sacred as God’s people need. By Baptism God’s Spirit has conformed us all to the priestly work of blessing, celebrating, and interceding – for others!