Intercessory Prayer
The Healing of a Paralytic.
One day as Jesus was teaching, Pharisees* and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was with him for healing. And some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed; they were trying to bring him in and set [him] in his presence. But not finding a way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on the stretcher through the tiles* into the middle in front of Jesus. When he saw their faith, he said, “As for you, your sins are forgiven.” Then the scribes and Pharisees began to ask themselves, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who but God alone can forgive sins?” Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them in reply, “What are you thinking in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralyzed man, “I say to you, rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.” He stood up immediately before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home, glorifying God. Then astonishment seized them all, and they glorified God, and, struck with awe, they said, “We have seen incredible things today.”
Luke 5:17-26
I love the gospel of the paralytic man lowered through the roof, and I decided to pray with Luke’s gospel reading because of its depth. Still, at the end of Matthew’s gospel, he says, “When the crowds saw this, they were struck with awe and glorified God who had given such authority to human beings.”
Do you understand the power of your prayer life?
Do you understand that you can intercede for others as an intercessor?
The friends of the paralytic had so much faith that Jesus would heal them; they cut a hole in the roof of the house to lower the man down to Jesus. That took great faith, but it also took great courage. Imagine what your friends would think today if you did something like this. My friends would be furious at me if I cut a hole in their house. Or, practically speaking, what if a friend was angry at God, and I blindfolded her and took her to adoration, confession, or Mass? Nowhere does it say in scripture that the man was angry, but he was probably desperate. What love they had for their friend to desire their friend to walk again and to be healed by Jesus Christ?
My friends, we can do this for our friends. It may just look a little different. It’s not hard to look around this suffering world and intercede for those around you. With the help of our holy saint friends, bring their petitions to heaven.
Let me tell you how my friends lowered me through the roof.
In 2017, a friend invited me to make my Cursillo, and instead of saying, “Yes, I’d love to attend a Cursillo, I lied to her and told her that I couldn’t because I was not confirmed.” I thought this was my way out. Cursillo was for broken people who had the desire to be fixed. I was appalled at others who thought that I needed to be fixed. What did they see that I refused to believe? I was just fine the way that I was. That, too, was a lie that I was telling myself. My behavior did not match the illusion of a whole person. Hurt people hurt people, and that was what I did often. I was hurting the people that loved me dearly. If you are not healed, you will transmit your wounds to others, which is not what God wants of you. So here’s how the rest of the conversation went down. LOL.
Another friend was listening to the side conversation my friend and I was having at our Friday coffee friend group. That was where I lied to her and told her that I couldn’t make Cursillo because I wasn’t confirmed. She called me out on my lie and said I could make Cursillo even if I was not confirmed. She knew this was a lie because she had just made Cursillo, and she wasn’t confirmed.
What she said next was how she lowered me through the roof.
She told me, but if it’s important to you, let’s join RCIA together and make our confirmation together, and then I can sponsor you for Cursillo. No longer did doing the work seem scary, but something that I could do WITH my friend.
Do you know what she did for me that most faithful Catholics are unwilling to do?
She climbed into my darkness with me and walked with me out of it. She joined RCIA with me in the fall of 2016, and we were confirmed in February 2017 at 37 years old. Then she sponsored me for Cursillo in April 2017. She cut a hole in my roof and lowered me to Jesus because I was unwilling to do that for myself.
When I arrived at Cursillo, I remember sitting at the table thinking there won’t be anyone else here that had lost a child, much less 3. God told me, little girl, sit down and let me love you. That’s what I heard. LOL. Three women in my small group beside me had experienced the loss of a child, and it was exactly what I needed to disarm me and open my heart to healing. I had experienced so much trauma through losing those three children, and my mother and I felt so broken beyond repair. I needed a space where I felt seen, understood, and wasn’t judged for the pain I was still holding on to.
The women at Cursillo opened their hearts to me and loved me through all of the mess and through all of the pain. It didn’t matter that I had been holding on to this for over 10 years. None of that mattered to anyone. They loved me where I was and for who I was. Losing a child is awful. It’s everything you think it could be, but way worst. I couldn’t carry that heavy cross, so I rejected it, turned my back away, and ran from God. I was hiding every chance I could from the world that didn’t understand the tornado that my heart experienced.
Why does God give gifts he takes away?
Who can make sense of that question unless you have pondered it yourself? I had never been in a space where women were so vulnerable to each other. Our family swept our broken pieces under the rug. You don’t talk about your feelings. We are private people. No one needs to know the broken that exists within. No one told me these things, but not talking about or feelings gave the impression that I couldn’t. They do not go away over time, and I needed to talk to someone I trusted. Not talking about it made me feel worse because there wasn’t a way to sweep this heartache under the rug.
Being around women who desire to walk with you through suffering was what I needed, and it is where my life changed forever when I met Jesus Christ in the tabernacle on my Cursillo weekend. The power God has given to the intercession of human beings consistently surprises and leaves me in AWE. That God shows up hidden through others and whispers His love through words, actions, and their presence is not a new strategy for evangelization. It’s as old as time.
I walked away from Cursillo changed from the inside out. I didn’t know that the Sacraments healed because of theology. I experienced healing through the sacraments and had to learn the theology surrounding my healing. I then became a witness to the power of transformation of God’s healing he desires for all of us through the sacraments he left for us in His church.
It’s amazing. We have Jesus Christ as our Mediator, the Holy Spirit as our Advocate, Mary as our Interceding Mother, the constant, attentive intercession of our guardian angels, and the saints: “when they entered the joy of their Master, they were ‘put in charge of many things.’ Their intercession is their most exalted service to God’s plan. We can and should ask them to intercede for us and the whole world.” (CCC 2683)
And—us. Personally and communally are called to pray as part of this glorious communion for one another.
