Prayer Changes Us

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, 
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
Soren Kierkegaard

“Prayer doesn’t change history; it doesn’t change nature;
and, it certainly doesn’t change God.
Prayer changes the one who prays.”
Skip Flynn

My “me time” (prior to the Corona virus) is mornings – ninety minutes pushing heavy (for a 74-year-old priest) dumbbells, barbells, and exercise machines and at least two or three miles on the treadmill. It’s time to go through the morning newspaper, catch-up on Internet news sites, talk – with students, faculty and alumni – and pray. Talk to and with God about just about everyone and everything that wanders through my brain.

For some reason, one Tuesday (I remember it was Tuesday) Danny popped into my brain. Child of an Italian mafia father and a Jewish mother, he couldn’t be “made” because he wasn’t “pure Italian.” He went to federal prison at age 18 because - the day after he and his brother pulled-off a mafia arson job - his brother insisted on going back to the scene. Danny took the rap and, during his first days in lock-up, applied a mop bucket ringer to the head of someone who was threatening him. His reputation was made. But so was his history. 

Times in and out of jail, a failed marriage, a couple of failed relationships. It was, in some ways, as if Danny’s history was chiseled – like his 6’4, heavily tattooed body – in marble. He went in and out of rehabs; got clean for prolonged periods of time and worked construction jobs. At one point, he “hid out” in my apartment for months while friends negotiated the lifting of a mob “hit” on him.

But he always kept in touch. It was easy to tell when Danny was clean. His first words in a call would be “Priestly Dude.” When he was doing poorly, it was always “Father Flynn.” I was the only “good father” he ever knew.

Twenty years after Danny died of a cocaine/heroin overdose, I found myself praying for him.

“It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead.
2 Maccabees 12:42-46

And for his son, Jerry, who was eleven when his father died.

“Prayer doesn’t change history; it doesn’t change nature;
and, it certainly doesn’t change God.
Prayer changes the one who prays.”

Two days later, at almost precisely the same moment, certainly in the same gym-chapel, I received a call from my secretary. “Do you know Jerry…?  He is searching for you and would like to see you. He says he needs help.” 

My schedule was beyond full. There was no possible way. But I returned the call. Because I had prayed for his dad and for him, I had to do my best to serve him, to carve out all the time he needed.

I wasn’t just surprised; I was overwhelmed by how much Jerry looked like his father. He began by showing me a picture of the two of them, probably taken five or six years before Danny died. 

I cried and Jerry cried. We missed, we grieved for his father, my friend. I continue to grieve because I truly miss Danny, whom I desperately love and loved. Jerry cried for “almost the first time” because he was finally allowed to grieve.

There have been relapses. Times when he has told himself that the emotional or physical pain was “too great.”  Times when he has called because he is “so happy” and times when he has called because he did not want to use - pills - to kill the emotional or physical pain. 

He’s struggled with his addictions. He still has moments of pull-the-car-over-to-the-side-of-the-road-and-cry grief. But, more than three years after that first call, as I write this, he’s almost a year clean and sober.

He’s lost weight and more and more is becoming the spitting image of his father – without all the tats. He has taught his son that, if he wishes to catch fish, he has to “spit on the bait” – a lesson he learned from me and I learned from my father. 

Please God, he will be there for his son’s graduation and all of the important events of his life. Please God, he will pray in gratitude for his emotional and physical pains and teach his son to pray in thanksgiving for 

All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
each little bird that sings,

He made their glowing colors,

He made heir little wings. 

The purpleheaded mountain,
the river running by,
the sunset and the morning,
that brightens up the sky.
The cold wind in the winter,
the pleasant summer sun,
the ripe fruits in the garden,

He made them every one.

The tall trees in the greenwood,
the meadows where we play,
the rushes by the water,
we gather every day.

He gave us eyes to see them,
and lips that we might tell 
how great is God Almighty,
who has made all things well. 

Somehow, with prayer and time, we find time and we are changed.