Prayer

Today’s readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101925.cfm) lead us to muse on prayer and what it means in our lives. When I say I’m praying for you, I mean it, it’s not just empty words as some will tell you. So when tragedy strikes, like a school shooting or the assassination Charlie Kirk, saying that we’re praying isn’t an empty promise. Prayer has power and if we don’t believe that as a nation anymore then we are in big trouble. The extreme left of our political spectrum has made it so even saying I’ll pray for you is now mocked and ridiculed.

But here’s where faith pushes back: if prayer’s power feels diminished in a nation that’s traded altars for algorithms, maybe that’s the very battle we’re called to fight. Not with more division, but with persistence—like that widow banging on the judge’s door until he relents. Charlie Kirk often spoke of prayer as warfare against cultural decay; his death, tragic as it is, might amplify that call. Cardinal Dolan’s comparison to St. Paul feels apt—a thorn in the side of empire, felled but not silenced.  We’re in big trouble if we’ve forgotten how to intercede for our enemies, too. Yet imagine the ripple if millions reclaimed that practice, not as optics, but as oxygen for a gasping republic.

What strikes me most from the readings today is Jesus’ question at the end: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” In times like these, with school shootings and assassinations blurring into a grim montage, that faith hinges on prayer’s stubborn hope. I’m praying—for the KIrks, for the mocked and the mockers, for a country that remembers mercy isn’t weakness. God bless America