The Intercessor

A LENTEN PILGRIMAGE

  Rev. Fr. K M George  

​

In the Lenten Friday midnight prayers, we are exhorted thus:“Take courage, O you who pray; do not be dispirited or slothful, because the entire prayer of the Son of God is for you. Therefore attach your prayer to His powerful prayer, and then your prayer will be answered.”
What a consolation for those who have feelings of despair while they pray! It often happens that we feel helpless and confused in our prayers. We are not sure if our prayers will be answered. We need some degree of certainty about the result of our prayers. But then we need to know how to pray. 

The admonition cited above teaches us a method or “technique” of prayer. We need to attach our prayers to the great high-priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ in our favour. We are used to sending “attachments” along with our letters and email messages. If there is an attachment it is indicated by a special sign. The attachment goes only together with the main message.
Christ is our unique intercessor before God, the Father. He is the only mediator between God and the humanity. According to the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ is our pioneer in faith, our eternal high priest, our mediator and intercessor.“He is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”(Hebrews 7:25)According to St. Gregory the Theologian (4th century), Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, “still pleads for us as Man” with His full humanity which is united with the Word of God incarnate.“For there is one God and one mediator between God and human kind, the man Christ Jesus.”(1 Timothy 2:5)
We invoke the Holy Virgin, Mother of God and other saints to pray for us. This is fully in tune with the unique intercession of Jesus Christ. The Holy Mother, the apostles and the saints cannot make any prayer apart from the prayer of Christ our High Priest, for they themselves have received the grace and holiness of God through Christ the only Mediator.

 In holiness and by the practice of virtue they are fully integrated to Christ. As we ask others to pray for us in this world, so we ask the Holy Virgin and the saints, who overcame the world by the power of the Holy Spirit, to pray for us through Jesus Christ, our Saviour. We pray for them too. Praying for them and requesting their prayers is the great sign of our communion with those who are fully in communion with our Lord. Their prayers for us are also attached to the prayer of the Lord, and are more powerful than the prayers of those who still struggle in this sinful world.

The Church teaches us that our prayers are not to be isolated individual supplications but collective outpouring of the heart of the whole people of God. It is compared to the image of the rain.

Rain falls drop by drop. Each drop of water by itself has no power. 

But when tens of thousands of drops are collected, they become a mighty stream. It is hardly possible for us to stop such a formidable torrent of water. Our prayer in community is likened to such a powerful current of water that can break open the door of divine mercy.

In the Lenten period, we are admonished to add each drop of our prayer to the prayers of all those who pray unceasingly for us and for the world. Above all it is our Lord Jesus Christ who prays for us. So, let us take courage and persist in our prayer without any doubt or disappointment.