By JAMES MONTI
We have all found ourselves in the situation of desperately praying for the conversion of a loved one, a friend or an acquaintance who has strayed from the faith or is totally alienated from God. It can look and feel very much like an impossible task as we become deeply discouraged by the obstinacy of such a person and the experience of praying over a long period, perhaps for many years, with no perceptible change in the person.
And yet we have those reassuring words of St. James that our prayers do make a difference (James 5:16). For in addition to our Lord promising that whenever we ask we shall receive (Matt. 7:7-8), what we are asking for in this case is something particularly dear to Almighty God.
The parable of the lost sheep tells us volumes about the lengths to which our Lord will go to save just one soul. He speaks of leaving the ninety-nine other sheep to go after and pursue the one sheep that has strayed and wandered away. This means, of course, an all-out pursuit, a relentless and determined pursuit. The soul seeking to run away from God ultimately has no place to hide, as Jonah’s futile flight from God demonstrates:
“. . . Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went on board, to go with them, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea” (Jonah 1:3-4).
Similarly, Psalm 139 attests:
“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? / Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? / If I ascend to heave, thou art there! / If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! / If I take the wings of the morning / and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, / even there thy hand shall lead me, / and thy right hand shall hold me” (Psalm 139:7-10).
When we pray for the conversion of a fallen-away Catholic or a non-Catholic, we share in the Divine Shepherd’s hunt for that straying soul, not unlike the hounds that join a foxhunter in pursuit of the fox. But also in the context of the imitation of Christ to which we are all called, we imitate our Lord in going after a wayward soul with our prayers.
When we make up our minds to pray with determination and perseverance for the conversion of a sinner, we offer our supplication to our Lord at Mass and before the Tabernacle, but also invoke our Lady, the saints and the angels.
Our humble supplications are taken very seriously by Heaven, more seriously than we can imagine. It is as if we prayed with the Psalmist:
“Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered; / let those who hate him flee before him! Summon thy might, O God; / show thy strength, O God” (Psalm 68:128); “Arise, O God, plead thy cause” (Psalm 74:22).
If we had eyes that could penetrate the veil between time and eternity, we would see the whole court of Heaven mobilized to take up our cause. For the Good Shepherd is also a Warrior, prepared to do battle with Satan and to seize from his foul jaws the soul that our Lord is determined to save. The heavenly host joins Him in the battle:
“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. . . .He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of Heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses. . . . On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 20:11, 13-14, 16).
As we said above, our prayers can seem futile when dealing with a particularly hardened heart, an obstinate sinner or nonbeliever with an adamantine determination not to change his or her ways. The great Spanish Augustinian archbishop and preacher St. Thomas of Villanova (1486-1555) likens a hardened sinner to an impregnable “castle,” “fortified against God,” and “difficult to invade” (Sermon 2 for Palm Sunday, n. 6, in Michael Woodward, tr., and Fr. John Rotelle, OSA, The Works of Saint Thomas of Villanova: Sermons: Part 3: Lent, Augustinian Series, volume 20, Villanova, Pa., Augustinian Press, 1995, p. 463).
But there is no substance in the universe, nothing whatsoever, that Almighty God cannot penetrate. For He who is “the Alpha and the Omega” and who has “the keys of Death and Hades” (Rev. 1:8, 18) holds also the key to every man’s heart. No one and nothing can bar His entry. A great way to picture this can be borrowed from one of the movie adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the 1984 production starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. Just before the ghost of Jacob Marley makes his appearance, Scrooge is frozen with terror as all the deadbolts and locks he has set upon the door to his room are quickly unlocked by an unseen hand.
The ultimate scriptural image of God storming the gates of a soul is provided by Psalm 24, a psalm that has inspired several liturgical rites which symbolically re-enact the dialogue it presents. Looking at this psalm within the particular context of the battle for souls, we see Christ coming to the portal of a hardened sinner’s heart with His heavenly army, demanding entry:
“Lift up your heads, O gates! / and be lifted up, O ancient doors! / that the King of glory may come in.
“Who is the King of glory? / The Lord, strong and mighty, / the Lord, mighty in battle! The Lord of hosts, / he is the King of glory!” (Psalm 24:7, 8, 10).
It is precisely within the context of the battle for souls that St. Thomas of Villanova interprets these words of the Psalmist, doing so in a homily delivered on Palm Sunday, when in Spain it was the custom to utilize the dialogue from this psalm for the moment when the celebrant in the procession of palms reached the closed door of the church and, knocking upon it with the processional cross, demanded entry in persona Christi:
“. . . however securely the castle of the soul is locked against the Redeemer through sins, however hard it resists, if the Lord knocks on the heart, if He touches the mind, if the voice of majesty sounds in the ears of the soul, then the iron chains are broken and the bonds loosened, and the soul goes out of sin through open doors to meet the Lord….The soul resists, but now the bridegroom has touched it, and it arises” (Sermon 2 for Palm Sunday, n. 10, in Woodward and Rotelle, Sermons: Part 3: Lent, p. 465).
Here St. Thomas of Villanova cites the fifth chapter of the Song of Songs: “Hark! my beloved is knocking. / ‘Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one; / for my head is wet with dew, / my locks with the drops of the night’. . . . My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me” (Song 5:2, 4). For Christ’s hunt for fallen souls is really a love story, and the passion of His pursuit is driven by His love for sinners. In yet another passage from the Song of Songs cited by St. Thomas, we read:
“The voice of my beloved! / Behold, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, / bounding over the hills” (Song 2:8).
The classic poetic depiction of our Lord as the Divine Hunter in pursuit of sinners is Francis Thompson’s 1890 poem, The Hound of Heaven, which employs the metaphor of Christ as a bloodhound chasing the hardened soul with “unperturbed pace” and “deliberate speed,” and is deeply rooted in the scriptural images of divine love:
“Now of that long pursuit, / Comes on at hand the bruit; / That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: / “. . . Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! . . . / Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee / Save Me, save only Me? / All which I took from thee I did but take, / Not for thy harms, / But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms / All which thy child’s mistake / Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: / Rise, clasp my hand, and come!” (The Hound of Heaven, in Selected Poems of Francis Thompson, London, Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1923, pp. 51, 56).
Pardon And Peace
St. Thomas of Villanova also speaks of the role of priests in the battle to win the “castle” of the hardened sinner’s soul with “paternal discretion, prudent counsel, and careful effort.” And in the case of weak souls, the priest should be prepared to follow the example of Christ as the Good Shepherd and carry the soul on his shoulders back to our Lord (Sermon 2 for Palm Sunday, n. 7, in Woodward and Rotelle, Sermons: Part 3: Lent, p. 464).
In his book addressed to penitents, Pardon and Peace, Fr. Alfred Wilson, CP, assures the penitent who is worried about how the priest might react to his Confession that there is scarcely anything that can gladden the heart of a priest more than the return of such a prodigal son or daughter to God:
“The priest spends his life searching for the lost sheep. . . . Your humble confession will be a source of joy to him. . . . Every ‘fisher of men’ is pleased when he lands a big fish. The worse you have been, the greater will be the consolation of the priest” (Pardon and Peace, New York, Sheed and Ward, 1947, p. 50).
In this great labor of seeking lost sheep, we can assist the priests with our prayers, but also with our words of counsel to wandering souls, as the holy Redemptorist brother St. Gerard Majella (1726-1755) did, described by a priest who knew him personally as “a hunter of souls, a hunter who had his eye always fixed on some prey for Jesus Christ” (Fr. Tannoia, quoted in Fr. Edward Saint-Omer, CSSR, The Wonder-Worker of Our Days: Life, Virtues and Miracles of St. Gerard Majella, Boston, Mission Church, 1907, p. 128).
Let us hope and pray for the glorious day when we and those whom we have brought back to God shall rejoice together in Heaven.
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