Broken
July 17, 2009, 8:48 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
Poor Pope Benedict. I’ll pray for him and his wrist, especially since we’re going through something of the same thing –I think in some ways, though, a broken wrist would be worse than a broken ankle–especially if it’s your dominant hand.
When we pray for someone who is injured or sick, are we asking God to intervene in some way and do something that he would not otherwise have done?
And I heard he still managed to say Mass before he went to the hospital! Way to play through the pain, Holy Father.
The real concern should be that he fell in the bathtub.
An indication of someone his age having balance problems.
Ther eare many helpful exercise programs for seniors and maybe thePontiff should also join such to his prayer life, as grace builds on nature.
“When we pray for someone who is injured or sick, are we asking God to intervene in some way and do something that he would not otherwise have done?”
Good question, David. I suppose it depends on what it is we pray for. I typical prayer of mine in this case would run long the lines of, “Dear God, please help the Holy Father to heal, and to keep his spirits up during his convalescance”. If it were a more serious ailment, I might pray for the patient’s family and caregivers, too. So I suppose I am praying for an intervention, but to my mind, God is present and active in the world already anyway, so maybe it’s not a very extraordinary intervention.
The healing miracles in the Gospels (like the passages from Mark we’ve been hearing during Ordinary Time) have been food for contemplation: how is it that Jesus and the apostles were given the power to heal? Does that not imply that there is a spiritual dimension to illness? But their successors today don’t seem to possess that power. Is it that the bishops’ faith isn’t strong enough?
Cathy –
I’m sure I speakfor all us bloggers when I pray that your ankle will heal swiftly and your whole summer won’t be messed up by it.
David Nickol ==
I certainly pray for God to intervene. Surely by word and action Jesus taught that we should do so. I think, in my medieval way, that we get more confused about God when we think of Him as existing in linear time. If we think of Him as existing in that one gigantic instant simultaneously and as choosing everything He chooses in that one moment, we avoid some of the paradoxes of God as different from us. (But only some of them.) In other words, from all time He chooses to intervene or not to intervene ==and knowing waht He is doing, plans what happens next from that base decision. And I believe that He is pleased (or something like being pleased) when He sees us trying to help others. So He showers more graces uponall of us.In other words,
it’s the people who have neither a simple, uncritical faith nor a more sophistocated medievel understanding of God who seem to have more problems with Him. (It’s hard being the middle child)
Thanks,. Ann. It’s teaching me patience, that’s for sure. And a whole lot of appreciation for the fruits of the Americans with Disabilities Act–cut curbs, elevators, accessible buildings, all the sorts of things that make it possible to get out rather than simply stay home.
Bob Nunz –
How right you aret about exercises to improve the balance of old people! I hadseveral months of physical therapy to improve my balance after having nerve damage from shingles. I’m quite sure it has kept me out of a nursing home.
Moral: all of you with old folks to watch over, force them if necessary to get such theraphy or at least get a professional trainer of some sort to prescribe an exercise regime for them. . We frail ones owe it to you. Don’t take a stubborn No for an answer. We owe it to you.
In one sense, B16 is lucky it was only his wrist. A peritus friend of similar age fell recently, and ended up in surgery for a hip fracture, with a long, painful recovery, including another fall.
Bob Nunz is right to caution about balance and the implications of fractures. Bathrooms are one of the most dangerous rooms in the house. Universal design, please, to avoid problems.
Prior stroke? Worrisome. May B16 have scenery like that in the link to nurture healing. I pray for an easy recovery for friend and pope.
P. S.
While i”m handing out advice right and left, let me remind you East coasters that it’s hurricane season and time, so get your necessities rogether, including treasured snapshots, extra bank checks (order some if you’re low), insurance and other important papers, pay off your crred cards because you might have big expenses if you have to evacuate, copies of your latest bank statement, and, you scholars, make copies on disks of your priceless studies on your big computers, and any other important data your recent scholarship depends on. (A friend of mine lost ALL of his life’s notes to Katrina.). Get your car checked out, and make plans forwhere you’ll evacuate to if necessary. Do it now. This takes more than one week-end.
I’d like to say that if I broke anything, it would consume every penny I have, since I have no insurance. So I pray for healing for the pope, but at least he can pay for it.
A very good point, Steve. I’m fortunate enough to have insurance-but I’m going to keep track of the bills, just to see how much this whole thing costs. Emergency room, surgeon, followup care, physical therapy.
I hope health care reform goes through. I believe there is some form of universal health care in Italy.
When we pray for someone who is injured or sick, are we asking God to intervene in some way and do something that he would not otherwise have done?
I ask myself this every time I do pray for someone. I’ve prayed for some who have perished anyway and I’ve wondered what was the point – what kind of God would help people based on how many others prayed for them, or how fervently they prayed, etc. But I think now that God is always trying to help those that need help whether they are prayed for or not, and that our prayers are about the transparent relationship we have with God – through our prayers we share with him what’s important to us.
Or at least that’s what I’ve been telling myself lately :)
Ann–
Are you the voice of Katrina, Rita, or both? ;) Very good advice! I once went through a hurricane outside the U.S., where hurricanes are called cyclones. Estimated 140 mph winds, and I lost everything except what I was wearing and what I had in my pockets. Though if truth be told, I didn’t have much to begin with. (I was a PCV at the time.) Still, it’s a terrible feeling to lose one’s lifelines–physical, emotional, etc.
As to BXVI, I’m glad his injury was relatively minor, and he seems to be taking it in stride. though I don’t think he’ll be signing any more encyclicals for at least the next 30 days.
Please pardon the length of this post, but the topic is apt.
Chapter 10 of Barry and Ann Ulanov’s “Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer” is titled “Answers to Prayer.” Unfortunately, that section is not part of what is covered by Google books. Sampling what *is* included is still well worth the peek.
Here are a few snippets from that chapter, hand-typed, sniff:
To doubt that our prayers are answered is a modern worry, reflecting the temper of our times. But the question sounds an ancient human theme, that of wanting to reach out, to feel in relation to life around us, somehow to touch the source of all life, mysterious as it is. The doubt that anything comes back and the accompanying need for clear proof bedevil us with a sometimes terrifying insistence. We need to know. We need indisputable proof. Otherwise we feel overwhelmed by our discouragement and spiritual insecurity.
Answers do come to prayers, both clear and unclear answers. What starts as an anxious query to God – “Are you there? Do you hear me? – or a defiant demand – “Prove it to me! Show me a sign!” – turns into fear in the presence of the holy. What begins as worry that our prayers are answered, ends, if we keep on praying, in awe that answers really do come. When that happens, we grow cautious about what we pray for.
Answers come in many forms, summed up best, perhaps, by the feeling that as a result of praying we get more self and more God…
God answers us in the flesh of our experiences – physical, emotional, intellectual, imaginative, spiritual. Prayers change us when we are answered by an expansion of self…The words with which we pray to God lead us into ourselves, to hear that primary speech so actively discoursing within ourselves. New thoughts come to mind…new ideas of what we should be doing spring up…Energy to improvise and imagine different courses of action…come to us…We feel more connected to reality. We know what we know at firsthand on the authority of our being…
Prayer protects us from our pretensions to omnipotence…Our prayers are answered by an enlargement of our capacity to suffer and to accept suffering as an indelible part of our lives and the lives of others…Prayers are answered by our being drawn more thoroughly into the life of God. As Eckhart put it, God is born in us…We move from knowing about God to knowing God directly, much less interested in self and much more attracted to the otherness…We are drawn well beyond the rules of an ethic or a theology that attempts to chart God’s actions and to justify suffering and disappointment by the logic of reason…
http://books.google.com/books?id=LrlU849hBxMC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Primary+speech:+a+psychology+of+prayer&source=bl&ots=4JafzSHFeE&sig=1I2pRe_vekq21img9eL61hoJ2Og&hl=en&ei=P9tgStT3MMKwlAeb-ZniCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
I hope some are interested enough to read this classic.
Carolyn,
thanks for taking the trouble to type!
Our prayers are answered by an enlargement of our capacity to suffer and to accept suffering as an indelible part of our lives and the lives of others
I really hate this idea :) My interpretation of Jesus’ actions in the gospels is that suffering is a bad thing …. when he encountered it he got upset, he felt compassion, and he acted to end the suffering, he didn’t tell people to suck it up. This is psrt of my struggle with praying for people who are sick – I don’t understand why some suffer so terribly and prayers for their healing are not answered.
Carolyn,
As I understand it, then, our prayers for the pope will have no actual effect on the way his wrist heals or doesn’t heal. It will give us a deeper relationship with God and help us understand more fully what happens to his wrist. It seems to me, from the little I have read of the book on Google, that in a way prayer is always about ourselves (and God). Praying for a sick person to be healed will not motivate God to work a miracle and heal the sick person. It will change our attitude, and maybe the attitude of others who are affected by our attitude, and maybe even affect the sick person in some positive way. But prayers to God for healing will in no way be like, say, the Centurion asking for his slave to be healed, and Jesus effecting a miraculous healing from a distance.
I hope we’ll be spared the obscene game of speculating on papal health. John Paul II should have stepped down when the time came, and Benedict should have plans in place too.
Prayer of petition was the only kind of prayer Jesus taught (in the Synoptics) and it is a deep form of prayer. It leads one to practice what Buddhism knows as the four Brahma-abodes: benevolence, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (for Christians ‘resignation to the will of God’). It puts one in touch with human suffering and weakness and with the power of God, establishing a salutary perspective.
Thank you, J. O’Leary. I am starting to read about Buddhism.
David, it’s all a puzzle, but I’d still pray. I need to move beyond the literal.
Crystal, Why do the innocent suffer? Actually, God only knows. We have countless valid questions, yet when the time comes, perhaps silence and awe will be all that’s left. I speculate though, and am leery of sources with definitive answers.
There is a powerful film that was on PBS about Holocaust victims holding a trial of God in an extermination camp. See “God on Trial” at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/godontrial/ Witnesses, testimony, judge, jury, and a verdict of guilty. At the end, a rabbi says, let’s pray.
A favorite poem by Wallace Stevens:
After the final no, comes a yes.
And on that yes, the future world depends.
Thanks for the link, Carolyn.