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You read that right. I am talking about God’s prayers and how we are to answer them. Isn’t it the other way around? Isn’t God supposed to be answering our prayers? If you happen to have caught last Sunday’s Gospel, taken from Jesus’ so-called “high priestly” prayer during the Last Supper (Jn 17:20-26), you may know what I am speaking of. 

Of course, we know Jesus himself prayed. Examples are abundant. He seems almost always to have been in prayer mode. Alone and in public, before meals, before important decisions, before and after healing, and often with the specific intent of wanting to follow the Father’s will. Clearly, he is praying to the Father, but he is a divine person, too. He is asking the Father to answer his prayers. Is he not also praying for an answer from us?

Jesus makes it very clear what he wants. Most of the time, up to this point, he has asked his disciples to follow him. This time he is saying that he wants us not to come after him, but to be with him: “I wish that where I am they also may be with me … that the love with which you love me may be in them and I in them” (Jn 17:24,26). Even more stunning, however, is his characterization of us as the Father’s gift to him! 

St. Paul echoes this manner of describing the church — all of us as members of the mystical body of Christ — not only as a gift from the Father to the Son, but even something that fulfills his identity. After reviewing the breadth and depth of all the splendors of God’s creation, Paul concludes “(a)nd he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way” (Eph 1:22-23). We are Christ’s everything, he is saying, echoing the prayer of Jesus.

What are we to make of this desire of Jesus and the clearly affirmative response of the Father that Paul describes? For this to be true, don’t we have a part to play in its fulfillment? If we are the answer to Jesus’ prayer — his life’s wish — then how exactly are we living up to what we really are? He doesn’t stop there. This time Jesus is praying specifically for us “and also for those who will believe in me through their word” (Jn 17:20). Do we need clearer directions for the focus of our mission as the church of Jesus Christ? 

Jesus wants more than a church of passive followers. He wants the whole world to know the Father has sent him and the love that this stands for (Jn 17:23). He also describes this love as something glorious (Jim 17:24). Obviously, he is not talking about something small or fragile. If our mission as a church is something weak or limited to an hour or so of worship weekly with a homily that barely serves as an appetizer for the glorious banquet heaven is likened to, then we seriously shortchange Jesus for the sacrifice he made for our salvation. Do we answer his prayers? 

Even if every church were packed at all Masses celebrated every weekend, is this all that Jesus is asking the Father for? Is he saying, “Father, I want every Catholic to be attending Mass on each Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation and to be sure to leave a generous offering in the collection basket?” Is this the best definition of the church God wants? Not that this never happened or could not happen again. I remember times in the fifties when all four Sunday Masses in my home parish — there were none on Saturday evenings — were standing room only. Four priests lived in the rectory so none were overworked in terms of their preaching and presiding. We did have a large school of some 800 students, with about 20 religious sisters. Priests visited the classrooms two or three times a month. Yet I wonder if, even were we able to “go back” to those days, we would still be answering Jesus’ prayer. Did the numbers necessarily translate into more engaged disciples? 

We may leave those questions to the historians to explore. Our task is to respond to the circumstances in which we find ourselves today. Where is Jesus most likely to be found? From where is he most likely to be calling us to respond to his prayer to share the glory of his Father’s presence in him and in us? I suppose this begs a question. Am I, personally, filled with a conviction and a joy from being blessed by God’s love, liberated from patterns of sin and other idols, overflowing with a desire to share this joy, as Jesus himself is? The next question is to whom is Jesus sending you and me to share the joy of the Gospel? 

“The Lord Hears the Cry of the Poor,” a familiar song refrain goes, based upon Psalm 34. Who and where are the poor? How does God hear them if not through us? Gospel narratives offer us much guidance here. We know the poor are always nearer than we think. The ways in which Jesus defined “neighbor” and the inevitability of encountering someone in need of healing, forgiveness, consolation, almsgiving, food, clothing and shelter were rarely more than a few steps away, especially if we consider the size of the territory within which Jesus moved throughout his life, barely the size of the State of New Jersey. 

I would submit that there are “homeless” who are living, or partly living, not even on the streets and park benches, but even in the places to which they return after schools, even teens who may not be certain throughout the day who will be in that place, whether there will be a meal, whether the same persons will be sleeping there as the night before, and in what state of sobriety they may be found. I have witnessed such uncertainties in the lives of some young people even in the most affluent communities. School professionals know all too well how inferior classroom performance is often not a sign of laziness or IQ deficiencies, but domestic food, shelter and safety insecurity. 

The poor are with us always, more than we know, and Jesus reminds us that among them we most likely encounter him. We may not find them first in church, even if we would welcome them there. First, we must meet them where they are. Are they so hard to find? Is our wilderness too thick to hear his voice among them, praying for an answer to his prayer?

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