Recently, I was glancing through my prayer journal from nearly thirty years ago, at which time I was a mere youth of eighteen. My intercessory prayer list was interesting, containing many names I recognized, and a surprising number of names that didn’t even ring a bell.
“My future family” was on the list, as were general prayer intentions such as “Iraq” and “all abused children.” When I prayed, as an eighteen-year-old, for “unity in the Church,” I had no idea that I was praying for my future husband. He had left the Catholic Church at that time, and it would take several years for him to find his way back. I was glad the list included the name of a friend who later died from cancer in his 30’s.
It feels great—powerful even—to think that I was praying for so many worthwhile things. I am so glad I was asking God for patience five years before I had my first child; little did I know then the kind of radical patience parenthood would demand! How thankful I am now that I was praying for guidance, for the strength to follow the Lord’s will for my life, and for the grace to be a more loving person.
My current prayer list has several of the same intentions on it as my original ones did. For example, I remember adding Doug’s name in 1990, and it has remained on my list ever since. I met Doug outside of an abortion facility where a group of us were praying for mothers to change their minds about having an abortion. “Escorts” in yellow t-shirts tried to hustle the abortion facility’s customers into the building, so that the sidewalk counselors could not speak with them and offer them alternatives. Doug was the only escort I ever encountered who was willing to talk calmly about the abortion issue. I did my best to share with him the reason my friends and I thought violence against the unborn created more problems than it solved. He didn’t agree, but was respectful toward me, which I really appreciated. I told him I would pray for him—I sensed at the time that I was making a lifelong vow.
Another person who remains on my prayer list is Jennifer Aniston. I added her nearly 20 years ago. I had never watched Friends and hadn’t seen many of her movies, but I sensed God prompting me to intercede for her. Soon after I added her to my prayer list, my husband and I were visiting some friends and talking about prayer. I said, “Sometimes I think that God calls us to pray in a special way for people who are in the limelight, such as actors…”
“Yeah,” our friend Anthony agreed and randomly added, “Like Jennifer Aniston.” Shocked, I asked him why he suggested her name in particular, and he said he didn’t know why. But God knows why, and I continue to pray for her to this day.
Over the years there have also been changes to my prayer list. When my children were approaching their teens, I composed a prayer that spoke to the needs of my growing children. The prayer, which you can download here, included their future spouses. When I prayed, I knew that somewhere in the world there were unsuspecting kids who were being blessed and assisted by God’s grace as they moved in the direction of my children’s hearts. Over the course of the past four years, all five of our children have married beautiful people, and my husband and I were thrilled to be able to tell each one of them that they had been our spiritual children for years.
When it comes to asking our Heavenly Father to answer our prayers, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “When we share in God’s saving love, we understand that every need can become the object of petition. Christ, who assumed all things in order to redeem all things, is glorified by what we ask the Father in his name” (2633).
We know God wants us to petition him. Here are just a few of the benefits of having a list of petitions:
- Not only does it make a person feel loved when we tell them that they are “on our prayer list,” but praying for someone is a way to actually be loving. St. John of the Cross “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”
- Jesus often praised people for their faith. Praying for certain petitions over time and with confidence in God’s goodness is an act of faith. It is as though we are saying to God, “I will keep asking for you to bless these people (or solve these problems or increase virtues in me) even when I don’t see immediate results because I believe that you are listening and that you will take care of everything at the proper time.”
- When we create a list of people and intentions for which we are praying, we can see the way God has answered our prayers. This becomes a testament to God’s power and grace. We share these answers to prayer with others to strengthen their faith, and it increases our own faith as well.
I like the way the authors of Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father’s Love explain how the intentions for which we pray can be nested inside our daily personal prayer:
“[Prayer lists] are ways that we gather our petitions into our hearts, calling them to mind, even stirring some affection, and then we…carry them with us into our union of hearts with the Lord” (p 257).
We are not obliged to have an “official” prayer list, nor is it necessary to pray for everyone and everything on our list daily, but it can be a helpful way to become people of prayer, as we gather all our personal needs and the needs of others into our hearts.
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