The Power of Prayer Worship, and Service

THE POWER OF PRAYER, WORSHIP, & SERVICE

These three Catholic practices remind us of God’s abiding presence and can help us navigate life’s ups and downs.

By Mary Ann Steutermann

Would it be strange to say that one of my favorite parts of the workday as a campus minister at a Catholic high school is the ending of morning announcements? After reports on club meeting dates, sports scores, and reminders about the uniform code, the last thing we hear over the PA at the end of announcements each day is the exact same refrain: “Remember who we are. We are the community of Assumption.”

A former principal of our school started using this mantra because it was a powerful message to her growing up. Whenever she would leave the house—for slumber parties and ball games as a young girl, and for dances and dates as a teen—her mother would remind her to “remember who you are.” It was shorthand for, “Remember who you have been raised to be. Remember that your words and actions reflect not only on you but on the family who loves and believes in you. Remember that if anything frightens you or anything dangerous happens, we are just a phone call away.” Our principal wanted our students to have that same powerful reminder: “You are part of a community who loves and supports and believes in you. No matter what happens today, don’t ever forget that.”

As my understanding of the world and my place within it has evolved over the course of my life, I have come to realize that the ultimate goal of religious faith is to help us “remember who we are.”

WHO AM I?

Of course, to “remember” we first must “know.” Who am I? At first glance, science and religion may seem to propose competing viewpoints. Instead, I think they are just different ways of saying the same thing. Science tells us that everything in the universe was born out of a tiny space-time singularity that began the processes known as expansion, nuclear fusion, and evolution that created life as we know it today. Religion tells us that all creation came from the one God who loved us into the fullness of life through processes we call incarnation, salvation, and resurrection. Through either lens, the answer to the question “Who am I?” is the same. We come from God. We “live and move and have our being” in God. We return to that same God when our time on earth is done.

If this is true for me, then it’s also true for you. All life participates in this divine wholeness. All life is part of God’s life. On some level, we knew this when— and perhaps even before—we were born. We knew that we were not “separate selves.” We were part of this holy Oneness.

It is in our brokenness that religious faith finds its true purpose and fullest expression.

REMEMBERING THE ANSWER

But then came playground bullies and middle school trauma. Then came our parents’ divorce, the F in geometry, and the heartbreak of first love. Then came unemployment, the miscarriage, the diagnosis, the loss of a spouse. In short, life happened. And we forgot that our separateness was an illusion because we felt less like part of something blessed and beautiful and more like part of something badly broken.

It is in our brokenness that religious faith finds its true purpose and fullest expression. It helps us remember that which living prompts us to forget. The word remember comes from the Latin remore, which means “mindful.” To remember is to call to mind that which once was, to bring something from the past back into the present.

Remembering has another connotation as well. Just as to “dis-member” means to divide up or cut into pieces, to “re-member” means to connect or rejoin, to put back together again. When I remember my deceased parents and share stories of happy times with my sister, I put something back together that was lost to me when they died. Even though we can’t be physically together, remembering them brings them from the past into my present reality. It makes me feel more whole or complete in some way.

Of course, remembering is hard work. It takes practice. Fortunately, the Church guides us in three central “remembering practices” that help us recall and recommit to the wholeness that is both our heritage and our destiny.

PERSONAL PRAYER

Individual prayer is a powerful way of reminding us that we are part of the body of Christ. St. Paul understood this dynamic well: “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. Now the body is not a single part, but many” (1 Cor 12:12–14).

When we study sacred Scripture, pray the rosary, or just say the Our Father, we are reminded that we are not the center of our own universe. When we pray “Thank you for these blessings,” we are reminded of our deep connection to the life-sustaining world around us. When we pray “Please help us,” we are reminded of our dependence on God. And when we pray “Forgive me for my sins,” we acknowledge that life is more than our individual, selfish concerns. Truly, anything that reminds us of the God from whom we came and to whom we will return is the blessing of prayer.

A 15-year-old student of mine who lost her mother to cancer told me that she didn’t pray anymore because “it didn’t do any good.” Her mother still died. I asked if there was anything that did do some “good.” She told me about the friend who insisted on staying over and even sleeping in her bed with her the night her mother passed. She also talked about listening to soulful instrumental music because “it seemed like the music felt as sad as I did.” Finally, she said she always felt better after hiking outdoors because it’s something she always enjoyed doing with her mother.

“Why do you think your friend and the music and the hikes were helpful?” I asked her. Her response was immediate: “Because they made me feel like I wasn’t alone.” I suggested that maybe each one of those experiences was a type of prayer for her. Maybe each served as a reminder that God was present, even when the grief was overwhelming. “Re-membering” in this way can help put us back together again.

COMMUNAL WORSHIP

Our Catholic faith is communal. It focuses less on individual salvation and more on collective transformation. We refer to the central sacrament at the core of our faith as “Communion,” where Jesus’ own words make the importance of remembering crystal clear: “Do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19). The sacredness of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection—first experienced in the distant past—is brought forward through this sacrament into the mess of our daily lives in the present. In doing so, the paschal mystery becomes not only a historical event but also a current reality. The brokenness we bring to the eucharistic table, along with gifts of bread and wine, is transformed through this sacred remembering.

The word liturgy comes from the Greek words leitos (“public”) and ergos (“work”). In other words, liturgy is “the work of the people.” It’s not the prerogative of the individual or a prize for the self-righteous; it’s the work of the people. The Eucharist, for example, is not a solitary endeavor. It’s about “the people”—those worshipping with us and those not present, the people we like and those we do not, the souls of the dearly departed and the entire “communion of saints.” Indeed, liturgy is the word we use to describe the ways in which we collectively remember—and re-experience— God’s presence.

I will never forget my son’s Baptism. Today the usual practice is to have the Sacrament of Baptism during a regularly scheduled Sunday Mass, but in the past, private family Baptisms were common. A dear friend who is a priest administered the sacrament with our family and friends present. The traditional words of the rite felt especially beautiful to me that day. At one point after pouring the water and anointing with oil, the priest invited everyone present to walk up to me as I held my baby and make the sign of the cross on my son’s forehead. There was something deeply powerful in those moments as this community, through this simple gesture, reminded me and each other that we are part of something much bigger, much more profound than our small selves. Rituals speak to us at a level beyond ordinary language and action. That particular liturgy created a beautiful experience of God’s presence that I treasure to this day.

SERVICE TO OTHERS

Interestingly, the word Mass comes from the Latin missa, meaning “mission.” More specifically, it’s taken from the language at the end of the Roman rite: “Ite, missa est” (“Go, it is the sending”). The central liturgy of the Catholic faith isn’t an experience designed to be its own reason for being. Its purpose is to help us “re-member” or heal our brokenness so that when we are sent forth from the liturgy, we are able to reconnect the disconnected, rebind the unbound, and reassemble the brokenness of the life outside the church doors. Religious rituals do not do the work for us; they prepare us to do this work.

But just what are we sent forth to do? “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37–39). That second commandment has multiple interpretations. At first glance, Jesus seems to advise loving our neighbors in the same way that we would love ourselves.

But there’s another way to look at Jesus’ words. Perhaps Jesus is telling us to love our neighbors because they are parts of ourselves. When we remember who we are, we live in such a way that recognizes our neighbor as an integral part of us. From this perspective, the only logical response to the needs of others is compassion.

At my school and many others, volunteer work is required. Some simply catalog service hours to ensure that students have completed the requirement. But I think my school does a particularly good job of calling students to reflect on what those service experiences mean—both to the student and to those served. One student reported that service taught her that “people who are outcasts from our society are just like all of us.” Another said, “I became less judgmental,” and yet another said that service “benefits me just as much as it benefits the people I’m doing service for.” Sure, a goal of service is to help feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. But it’s also to remind us of the sacred connection that binds all human life.

I continue to look forward to the end of the PA announcements each school day. I am grateful for the former principal who taught me about the blessing and the responsibility of remembrance. It is a gift to know oneself as coming from God, living in God, and returning to God. And it is a sacred duty to live in a way that recognizes that this is true for all living beings as well.

The Church’s “remembering practices” of personal prayer, communal worship, and service to others give us sustenance for our life’s journey. Perhaps the closest we ever get to the miraculous in daily life is simply in our remembering.

Mary Ann Steutermann is the director of campus ministry at Assumption High School, a Catholic all-girls school in Louisville, Kentucky. She’s also a freelance writer whose articles have been published in this magazine and on the popular Catholic website BustedHalo.com. Mary Ann lives in Louisville with her husband and son.