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Iane Sastre, Seminarian Protect Them Did you hear our Lord praying for us? He prayed for all that are His; and that includes us. Imagine how quiet all must have been as our Lord lifted His eyes to heaven and began the dialogue with the Father, the prayer that John was inspired to share with us. Lift up your eyes to heaven; lift up your heart, and listen. Our Lord prayed: "I have manifested, I have revealed, your name to those whom you have given Me; and they have kept Your word. They know that I came from You; they have believed that You sent Me. I am asking on their behalf.” He was praying for us too; with each word that our Lord was saying, that one moment in human history became eternal and the disciples for whom He prayed appeared beyond the measure of time to include those who were, those who are, and those who are yet to come. His words are still being said; they have not been silenced by time. We may think that this is possible only because these were the words of the Son of God; that it was in the words of His divinity that our Lord Jesus Christ broke barriers of time to leave us this eternal prayer. But we cannot forget that our Lord Jesus Christ was also the Son of Man, that God chose to become human, and that the voice that spoke this prayer was human – just like ours – and that the heart from which the prayer came was also human – like ours. The prayer of our Lord had urgency and grief – not any different then when we pray for a loved one for whom we are concerned. The words are familiar words of one who pleads for a loved one: "I ask You to protect them – we pray that way too. I ask You to keep from being alone, to keep them in unity – with each other and with You and Me. I ask You to sanctify them.” And it was done; the Spirit with which our Lord prayed is the same Spirit who guides each one of us today in our life and in our prayers. Human prayer is not very eloquent at times; and the more urgent the issue is about which we are praying, the clumsier our words tend to become. It is easy, for example, to give thanks when God’s hand is so tangible in our life that all we can do is lift our eyes to heaven and say “thank You.” And that’s probably one of the shorter prayers we can say, and yet it’s one that we will always remember; it lives forever in our heart – there you see, we too know how to say a prayer that transcends time: “thank you, thank you, thank you God.” And we don’t only give thanks to God for providing for us or for giving us creature comforts. We give thanks to God when He restores order in our life or when He opens our eyes and our heart to see and understand His order whether it is to our comfort or not. What I’m saying is that our gratefulness stems from recognizing God’s greatness acting in our life. It is not true that we only seek comfort; what we seek is God’s order, or rather – perhaps – the awareness of God’s order in our life. Our Lord prayed that we would be kept in God’s order: He said, “I ask You to protect them.” And it was done. We all have times in our life when we feel blessed; we feel peace and all seems to be in order. We also have had or have times in our life when things seem to be out of God’s order – or perhaps they are out of God’s order. Those are difficult times, times when we struggle, whether it is something that we – ourselves – are facing or something that a loved is going through. It is during those times when we seem to run out of words; we don’t know what to say. Those are times when we don’t know how to pray and yet we know that we must pray – we know that we must talk with God – because we know that He is our only source of comfort and hope. But what do we say? “Thank you?” Or perhaps simply “Lord,” knowing that He is with us; knowing that at that very moment God is honoring our Lord’s prayer to keep us, to protect us. It doesn’t really matter what we say because God is answering – honoring – our Lord’s prayer. God knows us; God knows our heart and our needs, and He is there even before we have said anything, because that one day in human history our Lord Jesus Christ prayed “protect them.” And it was done; God honors His prayer. And although what we say doesn’t really matter what’s in our heart does because what’s in our heart echoes our Lord’s eternal prayer. We feel the need to pray just like our Lord needed to pray for us; we feel the need to reach out to God whether in times of peace or in times of struggle – and I’m not saying that those are mutually exclusive. There are even times of deep grief or great struggle, when we may choose to pray in silence: no words, just the knowledge of God’s presence in our life, again, the knowledge that God is honoring the intercession that our Lord makes for us. “Protect them” And it was done.
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