In light of Our Holy Father Pope Francis’ serious sickness (as I write this article), I wanted to bring something of his words to you this week and next. On April 7, 2021, while doing an ongoing catechesis on prayer, he spoke on how our prayer brings us into union with the saints. They are prescient words as we embark on deeper and more consistent prayer during this season of Lent. Perhaps one of the ways we can do this is simply to unite and pray with those saints that are especially close to us. They have learned the work, and received the gift, of prayer perfectly; they can be a great help to us!
I was also moved especially by his reflection on prayer in time of suffering, especially as he himself has been carrying a heavy burden on that front these past weeks. Again and again, he has thanked the world for holding him in prayer, AND while hospitalized has given his signature for the further steps towards canonization of multiple saints! (Naming as venerable Fr. Emil Kapaun, military chaplain from Kansas; Italian layman Salvo D’Acquisto; Michele Maura Montaner, a 19th-century Spanish priest; Italian priest Didaco Bessi; and Kunegunda Siwiec, a Polish laywoman who died in 1955.) He is living out the teaching he gave those 4 years ago!
Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning!
Today, I would like to reflect on the connection between prayer and the communion of saints. In fact, when we pray, we never do so alone: even if we do not think about it, we are immersed in a majestic river of invocations that precedes us and proceeds after us.
Contained in the prayers we find in the Bible, that often resound in the liturgy, are the traces of ancient stories, of prodigious liberations, of deportations and sad exiles, of emotional returns, of praise ringing out before the wonders of creation… And thus, these voices are passed on from generation to generation, in a continual intertwining between personal experience and that of the people and the humanity to which we belong. No one can separate themselves from their own history, the history of their own people. We always carry this inheritance in our attitudes, and also in prayer. In the prayers of praise, especially those that blossom from the hearts of the little ones and the humble, echo parts of the Magnificat that Mary lifted up to God in front of her relative Elizabeth; or of the exclamation of the elderly Simeon who, taking Baby Jesus in his arms, said: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word” (Lk 2:29).
Prayers — those that are good — are “expansive”, they propagate themselves continuously, with or without being posted on social media: from hospital wards, from moments of festive gatherings to those in which we suffer silently… The suffering of each is the suffering of all, and one’s happiness is transmitted to someone else’s soul. Suffering and happiness are part of a single history: they are stories that create history in one’s own life. This history is relived in one’s own words, but the experience is the same.
Prayer is always born again: each time we join our hands and open our hearts to God, we find ourselves in the company of anonymous saints and recognized saints who pray with us and who intercede for us as older brothers and sisters who have preceded us on this same human adventure. In the Church there is no grief that is borne in solitude, there are no tears shed in oblivion, because everyone breathes and participates in one common grace. It is no coincidence that in the ancient church people were buried in gardens surrounding a sacred building, as if to say that, in some way, the multitude who preceded us participate in every Eucharist. Our parents and grandparents are there, our godfathers and godmothers are there, our catechists and other teachers are there… That faith that was passed on, transmitted, that we received. Along with faith, the way of praying and prayer were also transmitted.
– Fr. Dominic