Holy Communion and Prayer
Intentions
Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
October 7, 2014
A parishioner recently asked me to
comment on a daily email meditation she had received from the Society of St.
John the Evangelist (the brotherhood of monks from the Episcopal Church who
live an updated form of the rule of St. Benedict in community in the Boston
area). She was curious about the idea
of having prayer intentions at Eucharist suggested in the email:
Come to each Eucharist with an intention: something quite specific that you long for, for yourself or for someone else. It might be a desire for healing, forgiveness: ask the Lord for some particular gift or grace, and offer that desire to God during worship, full of faith and expectancy. I wonder what that might be for you today?-Br. Geoffrey Tristram
Some of you may have noticed that
some priests, including me, on occasion or regularly mention a specific prayer
intention at the beginning of the Great Thanksgiving, something like “This
sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving is being offered with special prayers for
….”
The idea is not that the Holy
Communion is a propitiatory sacrifice to appease an angry Deity, get on God’s
good side, and thus convince God to grant what you are praying for. Such an idea is silly superstition, and very
bad theology. God already loves us. God already knows what we want and desire;
our telling God this doesn’t change God at all.
It changes us. Asking God for
what we desire and need is a way of self-disclosure to God. If we are honest, we sometimes find that some
of our desires can only be presented to a loving God as a confession of failure
or sin. Petitionary prayer is like
taking off your clothes before your beloved: a form of intimacy and
self-revealing.
When the Priest or any of the
worshippers come to Holy Communion with special intentions in their hearts, it is
not to argue with God or beg God. It is
to focus our prayer, make the process even more intimate, and help us bring the
fervor of the prayer to the Lord’s Table just as we bring the power of the Real
Presence of our Lord in that Table’s offering to our yearning.
I invite all of us to bring special
intentions to each Eucharist, and each Prayer Office.
Grace
and Peace,
Fr. Tony+
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