By: Mary Anne Quizon
” If you have FAITH say to this mountain : Move ! and it shall be moved.”
The apostles then said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you have faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’ and it would obey you.”
When trying and hard times bringing one despair and feeling of helplessness come and seem to linger and stay, there is one answer that we almost always forget. Thus, resorting to some other negative solutions. Yet, it is always there to hold on to: Faith or strong belief that there is a Great God who without doubt will answer us if we just ask or pray for our needs.
Yet, did we ever think of prayer ? Prayer accompanied with a strong faith produces miracles. The word “prayer” seem to be banal and out of many a young peoples dictionary. People nowadays want to go social spending more time in Facebook , twitter etc that they forget more important things in life.
When we were little we were taught by the religious, teachers, parents and some catechists to pray. Yet some who never knew about or forgot the meaning of prayer would ask: what is prayer?
Quoting a religious teacher: “Prayer is talking to God or any deity with our whole heart, body and soul.”
Yes! In prayer, we can talk to our Lord Creator, our Father in heaven or any saint anywhere, anyplace and we can call that praying. We need this and we need that. Prayer is the answer. We go to church and attend a Sunday mass or service and that is prayer as well. We visit the church on a casual day when we need some favours or some requests , like winning the singing or spelling bee contest, passing our exam or winning some election and that is also prayer. We are in the super department store shopping and we discover one of our most used card is missing. We call our favourite saint of missing things and say: Oh Saint Anthony help me find my missing card, while sitting down to collect our mind and to browse through the quarter of a dozen of little wallets and envelopes cluttered in our hand bag after a score of calling to our favourite saint.
Lo and behold ! we find our missing card tuck up in that envelope of receipts in one corner of our bag. we thank the good saint and remember now that after the previous purchase of a small costly gadget we automatically wrapped that card with the receipt so as to remember to record the expensive purchase in our diary. We remembered to pray to our wonderful saint and thus we are helped!
Yet there are many more things to pray for and about. Some things that need constant and repeated requests such as healing of relationships or physical ailments, special favours and other things of significance to us.
The Lord counselled His disciples when they have tried healing someone afflicted by evil possession but could not heal the afflicted person. The Lord advised them that many times this kind of requests from the Father needs more prayer accompanied by penance.
We may ask : What is penance? Penance as defined in the dictionary is
“a punishment inflicted on one self….” But why do we have to do some penance? We have to do some penance to prove our sincerity in our prayers. To show or prove to the Great One that by reason of our sincere plea for answer to our prayers we are willing to give up, sacrifice or do something ..
One of the most sensational modern miracle regarding the power of prayer and Faith was the healing of Rita Klaus from her irreversible MS disease in its advanced stage so much so that she could only go about in a wheel chair. With half of her body paralized and with both of her legs facing the opposite its normal position, she was considered far from healing by her doctors. But when after months and years of seemingly unanswered prayers and in just one single night she prayed for the healing of her unbelief or faithlessness in prayers, she was completely healed ! Even Rita’s own doctor could not believe her healing! He thought Rita the person and his long time patient was being impersonated by a twin sister when Rita presented herself to him claiming that God healed her irreversible advanced stage of sickness.
There is also a healer in Brazil who people flock to and his name is “John of God”. There has been hundreds of documented healings that took place thru him. He touches the sick or does some operations with little or no blood lettings. These healings he would always say, were done with the assistance of messengers from heaven guiding him in the healing ceremony or operations. Books and documentaries had affirmed the genuiness of all the healings done by him.
The people who came to him with a strong faith that God is working via John as a medium to heal them were healed and John would always say as he has always stated in interviews : “I do not heal, It is God who heals”