The following is an article that Fr Antonio was asked to write for the April 2022 edition of the Much Hadham Magazine.
The news that the invasion of Ukraine had began shocked everyone. I don’t know about you, but I was filled with so many different feelings: fear, apprehension, anxiety, sadness and so on. I also felt a sense of helplessness. What could any one person do? I did not have the power to make a difference, to stop the invasion. I was powerless to stop the fear inside of me. This knowledge, this realisation left me feeling discouraged.
But then, the answer came to me, at an unexpected time and from someone unexpected. I was setting up for Mass one morning when a lady knocked on the sacristy door. She was carrying her recently baptised baby and she wanted a form for a certificate for Catholic practice, a common enough request. But then I saw tears in her eyes. I immediately thought that she must be going through a difficult family situation, or perhaps there was something wrong with her baby. But I was mistaken. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that she was very upset about the children in Ukraine. She felt for their suffering and how she could not imagine her baby going through the same thing.
Then, I found myself saying to her: “It is terrible. The only thing we can do is pray.” I realised then that I wasn’t so helpless after all. I had forgotten the topic of many of my homilies: the power of prayer. St Catherine of Siena’s words came flooding back. She spoke of self-knowledge which teaches that we are completely dependent on the Creator; that without Him we are nothing and can do nothing. It is only when we realise this that we can have a real relationship with the Lord, a relationship with its great foundation on prayer.
We might not have the political might of presidents, prime ministers and other world leaders. But we have the mightiest weapon at our disposal: prayer. At the time of writing, the Lenten season is in full swing but by the time you read this, we may well be into the Easter season. Prayer is one of the three pillars of Lent (the other two being fasting and almsgiving). It is what sustains and nourishes us in our hours of need. Prayer transforms helplessness into hopefulness. It transforms alone-ness into communal strength for when we pray, we are connected to God and the people around us. Prayer is the glue that keeps us together. Prayer is one thing that we can do for one another, all the time.
At Easter, we celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord. The Resurrection is the answer to our prayer for salvation. So let us not underestimate prayer. Yes, quite often it is the only thing we can do, but it is often all we have to do. Prayer is a powerful tool that God has given us. With God, anything is possible. With prayer, we can ask God to do the impossible.