Stop reading menu to God – Penna

Prayers of petition should lead us to bow to God's will

- WCR photo by Ramon Gonzalez Fr. Stefano Penna says we need to recover a sense of the Eucharist as Christ's sacrifice.

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

In prayers of petition as well as in our personal prayers, we often ask God to do what we want as if we were in control of our lives. It's like we are ordering from a restaurant menu.

But we are not in charge of our lives and therefore we should, as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane, leave it up to God, contends Father Stefano Penna.

In the prayer of Gethsemane we learn that Jesus told his Father "Thy will be done." This means that when we pray to God, we should ask him to handle every situation in the way he deems best, Penna told about 300 people at the Catholic Conference March 8.

"As people of prayer, as pray-ers, what we are is people who surrender to God," he said.

"When we pause to pray what we are doing is allowing God's prayer, the one who prays in eternity before the presence of the Father in the Holy Spirit, to pray within us. To pray is to silence our voices and allow God's voice to sound within us."

Penna, a professor of theology and religious education at St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta, gave the keynote address at the conference.

No matter what we would like to believe, we really don't have a lot of control of our lives, Penna said. Some people go and hear motivational speakers and learn how to put together wonderful plans and actualize their self-potential. But then they go home and they get bored.

Others wish that the cellulite they have was not there. Others get cancer or brain tumours.

"You discover that life is not something we are responsible for but you are reacting to it," the priest said. "And what's the Christian response? To pray 'Help, help.'"

Favourite theologian

What should we really pray for? Penna's favourite theologian, a five-year-old named Peter, knows the answer. When Penna asked him if he believed that God gives us everything that we ask him for, he replied without hesitation. "Not everything. Not toys." Why not? "Because you are supposed to ask your mom and dad for toys."

Prayer is silencing ourselves and practising the presence of God, allowing God's presence to transform us. "If we pray asking for something, what we are doing is actually acknowledging that we are not the source of our own life; that it isn't about us."

True faith de-centres us, Penna said. "It says it's not about me. It's not even about my plans."

So what should we pray for? Not simply for healing from cancer, not simply for peace in Afghanistan. Why? "Because we are not asking enough," he said.

"Be audacious," Penna said. "Our prayers of petitions are to ask for nothing less than God.

"The first point when it comes to thinking about our prayers of petition is that we have to surrender ourselves to the incredibly humble audacity of the children of God who say 'Lord, I'm sick, Lord, I am in trouble, I want nothing less than you.'"

Our problem is that we understand the Eucharist not as a sacrifice but as a banquet. When we pray to God we are reading a menu.

"It seems to me that very few people anymore talk about the sacrifice of the Mass," lamented Penna. The Eucharist is the sacred banquet but it is a banquet that brings us into contact with the reality of Jesus' death on the cross.

"At the Holy Eucharist we are going to Calvary, we are going to a place of sacrifice, we are going to a place where someone is surrendering themselves to sacrifice," the priest said.

Safeway people

"We don't think about that because you and I are Sobeys and Safeway people. We don't taste what goes on in our food.

"What goes on in our food? Death. Absolutely! How many of your children have actually seen a chicken have its head cut off? We are completely denying to them the reality of what our food is about. Chickens die, cows die. Those little carrots, nice and cozy, they were screaming (when you ate them). It's a living, breathing reality that dies so that you might live."

We have severed the taste of sacrifice because we are self-satisfied people, lamented Penna.

But if we change our understanding and turn to the truth that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, then we will be drawn into the love of the Christ who said, "Not my will but yours be done," Penna said.

When we gather together to pray our petitions we have to think about Jesus praying in the garden. And what does Jesus say? "I don't like this. I don't want this.

"I don't like my cancer. It sucks. I don't want violence. This is horror. I want a different cup to drink. This is my desire but not my will but your will be done," Penna said.

Saved through suffering

God has saved us through suffering. "God has saved us through his Son saying, 'I don't want to do this but out of love I will because I want nothing less than you and your will,'" he said.

A true prayer of petition, Penna said, requires us to stop reading the menu to God and surrendering ourselves to the will of God. "This is the prayer of petition - an entry into the love of God for the world."

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