Feb. 2019 Lecturer’s Report: Mike McCray: “Enabling Powerful Prayers” referenced to Sr. Anne Shield’s Book: Pray & Never Lose Heart – the Renewal Ministries. JMJ

Getting right to the heart of the matter, we humans hate to suffer. It grieves us when we see our loved ones’ suffering. And though we may not pay much attention to Jesus in our daily lives, in such suffering we pray more intently than ever before for a healing from the Lord, whether it be for ourselves or as an intercessor for another. But many times, our prayers seem to go unanswered, and we feel our prayers are falling on deaf ears.

Sr. Ann Shields, in her little book, Pray and Never Lose Heart, Jesus evaluates the spiritual health of our souls, to gauge whether he grants our prayerful petitions or not. The good Sister, backs up everything she says from Scripture verses. She says we have a much better chance of the Lord performing a miracle, in our petitions of intercessory prayer, if we ourselves have a clean heart. In fact, he joyfully grants our requests as our clean heart allows us to be a leap forward towards the reward of eternal salvation!

To obtain a clean heart, not surprisingly is tied directly to our success in confessing our own sins in the Holy Sacrament of Penance To obtain a clean heart we must bare our souls with a contrite heart, and with a lively sorrow for our sins we must come clean with the Lord and confess any sins that we have held back in the past due to embarrassment, or that we have rationalized and re-rationalized until we demote a serious sin to not sin at all.

Consider that wouldn’t it be better to be a little embarrassed now, then to have to explain to Jesus on Judgment day, who will judge with His Father’s sense of justice, as the time for mercy is over. The glorious benefit is that we will have started a new page with the Lord! As your invite him into every area of your lives and align your heart with his, you will be in humble awe with how much he watches over you, has his saints and angels watch over you. Of course, it also helps to offer our prayers up to Mary as an intercessor to Jesus

The great advantage in all of this in the process of coming to have a clean heart, we start off with a new page with our Lord. A solid relationship, where Jesus wishes to communicate with us as a dearest friend. Once that happens, keep your eyes open for the blessings he provides in your life and the lives of your loved ones. And the Lord will embrace your petitions wholeheartedly, just as a good friend desires to do for you. But a note of caution, we must be patient. If the Devine Physician sees the one we pray for has spiritual weaknesses, he will work on those 1st. Once the patient’s soul is healthy, he will be overjoyed to heal them. In the interim sufferings can have great value in leading the patient closer to the Lord. And if they offer their sufferings in union with the Lord’s suffering on the cross, especially at Mass, that really touches his heart in our consoling his thirsty heart of our union with him.

Vivat Jesus