Column by Joe Pisani
About 10 years ago when I was working in Manhattan, I got off the train in Grand Central Terminal and made my way through crowds of commuters to Lexington Avenue and onto Fulton Sheen Place near the Church of St. Agnes.
Suddenly, I found myself behind a young woman, walking and talking on her phone, who started sobbing, “I don’t know what I’m going to do! I don’t know what I’m going to do!”
Her agonized cries made me imagine a hundred tragic possibilities that could have brought her to such despair, one more painful than the next, and so I did the first thing that came to mind and uttered the words, “Jesus, help her. Jesus, please help her.”
It was my introduction to a practice that’s turned me into a sort of spiritual EMT — praying for complete strangers, some of whom may not even understand the efficacy of prayer or have no one to pray for them. And it’s very apparent that the world is populated by people who need prayer. Correction: The world is overpopulated by people who need prayer.
The causes of their despair are many: a friend dies, a child dies, a spouse dies and the grief is debilitating. A relationship ends, a job is terminated, a mortgage can’t be paid, and a betrayal cuts to the heart. Loneliness, depression, mental illness, emotional abuse, physical abuse, a potentially fatal diagnosis. The list goes on and on, and should remind us of one certainty in this life: Everybody needs prayer.
So, if we’re only praying for people we love, including our family members and friends, we’re not doing enough praying. Jesus said to pray for our enemies, and I’d add that we need to pray for complete strangers, for people we don’t even know.
Whenever my wife and I are driving on the highway and she hears an ambulance siren and sees the flashing lights, she immediately stops talking, makes the Sign of the Cross and says a Hail Mary for the person in distress. It’s a spiritual 911 call. She did it recently when our grandson was in the car and promptly encouraged him to start doing the same thing.
A few months ago, I came upon a book by author River Jordan titled, Praying for Strangers: An Adventure of the Human Spirit, in which she recounts her New Year’s resolution for 2009, when her two sons were going to war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and she realized the most important thing she could do would be to pray for their safety.
She also made a resolution to focus on praying for strangers rather than herself. A different person every day. The results — as are all results when Jesus gets involved — were nothing short of miraculous.
I know several people who pray for strangers, living and dead. My friend Linda and her Maltese-terrier Peaches spend their mornings walking through a cemetery near their home and frequently pause to say a prayer at the grave of someone the Holy Spirit inspires her to pray for, including veterans from as far back as the Civil War.
“As I walk around, I look at the graves and make the Sign of the Cross and say a few prayers, adding, ‘I hope you’re resting in peace.’ I feel close to them all,” she says.
My friend Jenine does the same thing in her work.
“I realized very early that while driving through the cemetery, monuments became reminders of the families I had come to know and care about,” she said. She asks God to bless them and comfort their families.
“My prayers are nothing elaborate, just short and sweet heartfelt words to God,” she says. “They are simple prayers, which over the years have become part of my everyday prayer life.”
She says that whenever someone comes into your mind, you should consider it an invitation from the Holy Spirit to say a little prayer for them.
Do you remember that Dionne Warwick song, “I Say a Little Prayer for You”? It doesn’t take much time. It doesn’t take much effort, but the benefits are incalculable, and we’ll never know the full effect that our prayers have had until the next life, when Jesus pulls aside the veil.
Then, we’ll be able to see the countless troubled, lost and lonely souls who were helped by our simple prayers. They were once anonymous strangers, but someday when we meet, they’ll be our grateful friends.