Le blog de la Bergerie
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Le blog de la Bergerie
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"When I pray for a brother, despite anything he has done that annoys me, I cannot
condemn him nor hate him anymore. No matter how upsetting or unbearable his
face is to me, he will acquire during the intercessory prayer the face of the
brother for whom Christ died, the face of the forgiven sinner.
What a sense of peace can this discovery of intercession bring for a Christian:
there isn't anymore any dislike, any tension or personal disagreement that,
as far as we are concerned, cannot be overcome. Intercessory prayer is a purification
bath where the faithful and the community must dive in daily. It is sometimes
a very hard struggle with some of our brothers but the promise of victory is
at the heart of intercessory prayer.
How is it possible?
It is because intercession is nothing else than the act of presenting our brother
to God, trying to see him under the cross of Christ, as a sinner needing His
grace. Under this perspective, whatever was appalling to me about him disappears,
I see him now in all his misery, his distress and his poverty, and I take over
his sins as mines, so that I cannot do anything else than pray: Lord, take care
of him, according to your judgment and your mercy.…
Intercessory prayer is a service that we owe to God and to our neighbor on a
daily basis. To refuse it to our neighbor is to refuse to give him the most
basic Christian service par excellence.
We can also see that intercessory prayer is not some kind of general, vague
thing but a very concrete act. It is a question of praying for such and such
person, or a difficulty, and the more precise the intercession is, the more
fertile it becomes."
"De la vie communautaire", collection "l'actualité protestante", 1947.
When I first read the above passage, I was very moved and I completely agree with what he was saying.
I often thought about it (the prayer) and about him (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and his life and his death...
and I greatly thank him for leaving us these words, this clear encouragement on how to love our neighbor more and how to better form a community.
Read about him HERE
MicheleSzekely@2008-2022