9781644135945

The Easter Cycle
God-fearing brothers and sisters in Christ. What a precious possession such prayers are! How
we should prize and treasure them!
“Ask, and it shall be given you.” What the Church wants today, above all else, is souls devoted
to prayer. All of us in some way share a responsibility for our fellow Christians. God
wishes the salvation of all men. But if this goal is to be realized, men must themselves desire
salvation and work to obtain it. Moreover, men must will the salvation of their fellow men and
work to accomplish it. Every man is master of his own destiny. But even so, each one of us is
in some measure the master of the destiny of others. We all contribute to the good fortune (or
ill fortune), the salvation and eternal destiny, of our fellow men. Because we are all branches
of the same living vine, Christ, our lives are intertwined. Necessarily, therefore, we can and
do promote or hamper the progress of other branches of the vine. There is no such thing as a
neutral position.
To a certain extent even the eternal salvation of our fellow men lies in our hands. This
responsibility we discharge by means of our example and our prayers. By means of our
prayers we prevent the just wrath of God from being visited upon His people. The sins of
men in our day call out to heaven for vengeance. How frightful are the sins of unbelief!
How horribly men revile God; how rashly they deny Him; how foolishly they blaspheme
against Him and His Church! The world is drenched in sins of hatred — hatred between
nations, hatred between social classes, hatred between individuals. For that reason we are
admonished in today’s Epistle: “Dearly beloved, . . . pray one for another that you may be
saved. . . . If any of you err from the truth and one convert him, he must know that he who
causeth a sinner to be converted from the error of his way, shall save his soul from death,
and shall cover a multitude of sins.”
To save souls through the power of prayer is the great occupation of the Church during the
rogation days and at other times also. She prays that souls may be saved, and that is the purpose
of our prayer also. We pray with the tenacity of the beggar mentioned in today’s Gospel: “Yet
if he shall continue knocking, I say to you, although he will not rise and give him because he
is his friend; yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.”
We must pray much, pray diligently, and pray without ceasing. “Ask, and it shall be given you.”
We place too little trust in the promise that has been made to us and too little dependence on the
value and the power of prayer. That is why our prayers lack confidence and zeal. And yet, precisely
to those who possess zeal and confidence the promise has been made: “All things whatsoever
you ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive” (Mk 11:24), and “If thou canst believe, all
things are possible to him that believeth” (Mk 9:22). Moreover, the closer our union with the
Church, the more effective our prayers will be. This union with the Church will manifest itself
in the firmness of our faith, in our obedience to her commands, in our devotion to her service,
in our participation in her prayer, in our sharing of her sacrifice. Under these circumstances our
prayers will have the quality that every effective prayer must have: they will be devout, zealous,
unceasing, childlike, and persevering. Therefore pray with the Church.
“Ask, and it shall be given you.” Today the liturgy associates this admonition with our
reception of Holy Communion, for at that time we are most intimately bound to Christ the
vine, to the other members of the community, and to the Church herself. At this most holy
moment Christ, who has sacrificed Himself for us, prays with us and for us, together with the
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