The other day I took out my family to go shopping and since I do most of that online, I took photos at a local shrine. Since the family needed (?) three hours, I also went to have coffee and process my photos on the computer. I went to a coffeehouse run by Christians, but not specifically a Christian place, or so they advertised.
It was a good experience until I heard the man I presumed to be the owner talking to another woman. He explained that saying something over and over again has no effect on the will of God. Basically, we only have to say it once. And, he used the “Hail Mary” prayer as an example and how Catholics can repeat it all they want, but it doesn’t change the mind of God. He also told the lady that while he didn’t believe the end was coming in 2012, he did believe all the evidence pointed to it being very soon. The whole conversation took me back to my college days when I was struggling with evangelicalism.
I wanted to focus on the complaint about repeating words and phrases. Does it change God’s mind? In a human perception kind of sense, who knows? In terms of the divine plan, no. Certainly some Catholics would take that approach, but then again so would many Protestants, just with many different prayers and actions.
What this guy didn’t understand, I think, is ritual, and the honor it gives to God and his holy ones, and its value for us. Sure, saying one, or fifty, or one million Hail Marys may not change God’s mind, but it goes a long way towards changing ours, and blessing our hearts in the process. He saw prayer primarily in terms of asking; I see it primarily as worship and communication with God.
I really liked the coffeehouse itself, but it’s sad that it became a venue for bad or misinformed theology. But, little did he know that I had just been to a shrine honoring Mary as Our Lady of Lourdes and was processing photos of her right at one of his tables. Fortunately for him, I judged the place on the coffee and the wifi (both excellent), not the theology.
Image by Jonathan Bennett from Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine, Euclid, OH. To order prints or download high resolution images, click here.
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October 5, 2009 at 8:17 am |
Why didn’t you strike up a conversation with him? It sounds like he was probably a Protestant and not unchurched but I strongly believe that Protestants and Catholics need to be in a much stronger dialog so that can understand each other better. After all we are all praying to the same God so we should get to know each other better.
I agree with you on the repeating phrases and words with one exception. I think that it is totally for the person and not really for God at all. I think God hears us the first time ;-) . But the longer we stay focused on Him the better we are at truly understanding Him and his will in our lives.
October 6, 2009 at 6:40 am |
I thought about a conversation, but honestly, he came across as arrogant (he was just explaining to this lady all he knew about football, which also wasn’t much) and I didn’t think that he’d to anything but try to “witness” to me.
I agree that God hears us the first time and it’s for us. But, perhaps somewhere in God’s divine plan, faithful prayer without ceasing can have a role in “changing” God’s mind (like Abraham “bargaining” for Sodom). Note the quotes however, because it’s only change from our perspective!
October 6, 2009 at 10:26 am |
This was something I struggled with a lot when I became Orthodox (the “Lord have mercy” 40 times during the Divine Liturgy and during the Hours), but I never felt like I was causing the Lord to rap his fingers on the table and look at his watch while the Spirit within me, well, groaned. It’s definitely not about “hoping God will hear,” but rather fixing the eye of the mind on the divinity of Jesus Christ in an optative relation, or in the case of the “Hail Mary!,” it does, as it were, make the pray-er present almost as an angelic witness at the incarnation with the holy Gabriel, and recognizes the God-birthgiver, from whom our Freedom and Salvation has sprung, as truly Mother of God and our Mother, our model. Delighting in that event, that moment, and not wishing to take one’s eyes from it – is that _vain_? I encourage you to _repeat_, at any rate. I think you and I had a conversation about this on the Paltalk group we were part of before we ended up leaving Anglicanism.
There is something pitiably wrong about our relationships with these folks when they can sing the chorus of an emotional Revivalist folk song over and over and over without thinking it “vain repetition” because they rightly recognize that they’re not repeating it to “get God’s ear,” and yet they somehow suffocate the truth of what we’re doing under false interpretations that their own experience has sufficient resources to uproot so that they can comprehend our activity properly.
If you wish to see vain repetitions, the real thing, watch the little mini-scenes of pagan Roman religious life that pepper nearly each episode of the first season of the TV show “Rome.” Magic is the target, not repetition per se.
October 6, 2009 at 11:48 am |
Our priest at Mass Sunday spoke about this topic.
He illustrated it this way: you breathe in and out, over and over again, day after day. This is necessary for life, and yet no one criticizes it as being repetitious!
I thought that was cute, and also food for thought.