Had a Moment of Healing at Mass Recently…

…that it feels like I should share.

The psalm responsorial was something to the effect of “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether” and the gospel reading from John was:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (Jn 15:1–11)

My mind naturally gravitated to the bit about “ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.”

I have struggled for a long time with that since it is manifestly obvious that God does not answer all our prayers. Indeed, he did not even answer all of Jesus’ prayers, notably saying “No” to the plea “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”

I have agonized for a year over the flat NO I received in praying for the defeat of Donald Trump after years of prayer. I prayed my guts out for that and it was so crushing to see the prayer refused.

But as I reflected both on the refused prayer of Jesus and, similarly, the refused prayer of Paul…

And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn* was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Co 12:7–10)

…my mind harked back to the psalm and it occurred to me that God alone knows the end, that it is not empty flattery but clinical accuracy to say that his judgments are true and righteous altogether and he alone knows whether answering our prayer in the time and way that we want will result in disaster for the only end that matters: getting to heaven.

The passage from John presupposes that our prayers are ordered toward the coming of the Kingdom. It does not posit God as a vending machine for our appetites, but something more like the supplier of the resources necessary to build the Kingdom of God. If we are committed to that end, God will see to it that we get the graces and resources needed to achieve it. But given that the Kingdom of God is within/among us, it does not necessarily follow that external circumstances we want to see happen are what God is focused on.

Jesus’ prayer was denied because to answer it in that moment would have wrecked the purpose for which he came: the establishment of the Kingdom about to be inaugurated by his death and resurrection. For the same reason, the prayer “If you are the Son of God, come down from the Cross” was not answered in the way it was phrased, but was emphatically answered in another and transcendent way three days later.

Similarly, Paul recognizes that, intolerable as his thorn was, there was something that needed to happen in him that was more important to the coming of the kingdom in him than the sufferings from the thorn. Indeed, he grasps that the refusal of his prayer is part of the gift and that it is helping him put to death his pride or “elation” that would otherwise hurt his achievement of the sanctity that is the real goal.

It suddenly dawned on me that, though the last ten years have been bitter and hard and full of (as I thought) unanswered prayers, it is also true that almost nothing I have learned in the past ten years–things now central to my Catholic faith–would have been learned, would even have been conceived of as a problem in my soul that I had to see, confront, and repent, had God answered my prayers in the timing and way that I wanted. In short, his No’s were just as much a part of his answers to my prayers as his yesses because the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. I could not have grown at all had he given me what I thought I wanted. I only grew because he gave me what he knew I needed–which was the real prayer.

It gave me peace to realize that. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. They are also very weird and mysterious.