The statements being made by some prominent Leftist politicians in the wake of the school shooting in Minneapolis are outright satanic. Joy Pullmann wrote a very good essay expounding on that at The Federalist.
We wanted to focus on a smaller part of that phenomenon she wrote about, the mocking of prayer as something weak and ineffectual. The Church Fathers, who are masters of the art of prayer, who have experienced the richness of its depths, universally declare the opposite:
“This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” [Matthew 17:14-23]
If this kind goes out by the prayer and fasting of another person, then it is even less able to enter one who fasts and prays.
What protection!
Although there are a slew of demons and all the air is packed with them, they cannot do anything to one who is protected by prayer and fasting.
For a believer there is nothing terrifying here, because near a God-fearing man demons only busy themselves, but they do not have any power over him. A sober man of prayer shoots arrows against them, and they stay far away from him, not daring to approach, and fearing the defeat which they have already experienced.
The objection of course is that prayer did not protect the students at the school in Minneapolis. But this touches on the mystery of human freedom. God does not restrain the free will of men and women; He allows us to choose good or evil for ourselves. The prayers and worship at the Annunciation Catholic School could have guided the shooter Robert Westman to virtue, but he rejected the good things offered to him and chose to befriend Satan instead, chose to become a murderer. This is reminiscent of Judas the Traitor, who lived nearly every day with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself for three years. How could that not have protected him irrevocably from demonic influence? But because of Judas’s own free will, he allied himself with the Pharisees and plotted the murder of his All-Good Master.
There is an assumption about prayer implicit in such objections, that it is little more than magic, i.e., a way to quickly accomplish the will of man in the world. That is a tremendous misunderstanding. The main purpose of prayer is the accomplishment of God’s will in the world (‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,’ as we say in the Lord’s Prayer). That can only happen when we deny our own corrupted, fallen will and cooperate fully with God. Disobedience of God, self-will, acts of evil: Each of them thwart God’s good plans for the world.
But the Holy Trinity, because He is All-Good, is not idle in the face of this resistance. He is constantly using the evil deeds of man and the demons to bring about salvation and healing for us; He transforms evil acts into blessings for the cosmos. Christ again is the supreme example of this: He died a cruel death upon the Holy Cross, an apparent victory for the forces of evil. But through His death, the most heinous act of murder and blasphemy that could be committed by men, and His resurrection, death itself was destroyed, the captives of hades were freed, the gates of Paradise were opened to us once again, and all of mankind will be resurrected at the end of time. In the fulness of time, we may rightly expect good things to come from the sorrowful events in Minneapolis as well.
St Nikolai Velimirovich elaborates on this theme, writing poetically about why hardships should be seen as blessings:
. . .
The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/09/garlington-against-the-prayer-mockers/.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
No comments:
Post a Comment