We’ve just stepped into the portals of 2024 and, for sure, sundry wishes and high hopes once again sprout aplenty, ranging from the most trivial to the grandiose or even the bizarre ones.
Yes, the new year offers us no surefire hope that things will come out smooth sailing and easy. But it’s our natural inclination to crave, warts and all, for better things than not.
Hopeful or not, is it yet plausible for us to manifest or make things happen in the new year?
To my mind, two recipes come to the fore: Believing and Praying.
First is believing (or faith) – the foundation for making things happen.
The magic of believing has become a miracle worker for a multitude of believers – it causes people to be cured, it enables others to climb the ladder of success and get phenomenal results.
Believing is not just desiring. Nor does it emanate from our fancy urges and cravings. Believing is more than our feelings and emotions.
Believing is not just thinking or rationalizing. Thinking can lead to more thinking and, therefore, to more questions. Believing is not more thinking; believing is beyond thinking.
True believing – the one that can make miracles happen – involves our whole being. It is a firm, deep-seated, positive conviction that powers the fiber of our being. True believing is believing with all our mind, heart and soul.
In Matthew 17:20, Jesus told us that “if we have faith as small as a mustard seed, we can say to a mountain to move from here to there.”
Now, you simply don’t stop at believing in order to manifest your wishes and desires for the new year.
If believing is the internal foundation or base stuff that you have, prayer is the actual expression or affirmation of your faith.
Even if you do have an internal assent of believing (or trusting) in God, or even if God for certain already knows all your needs, the act of praying is still plausibly imperative for it not only shows your “helplessness” before God but, more so, it concretizes your assent or response of “Yes” to God’s saving power – and God is surely delighted. Verily, St. Augustine cannot be more right when he quipped, “God cannot save us without us” (that is, without our free consent and willingness).
Prayer, hence, is likewise a “sine qua non” or necessary requisite to our making miracles happen in the new year.
Prayer is not just asking or lifting to God our petitions. According to Fr. Richard Rohr, modern-day mystic and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, “prayer is not simply making announcements to God about what we need but, more importantly, it is experiencing or embracing God’s supernatural presence in us, in our thoughts and actions, in our surroundings, in our relationships with others, in everything.”
Lastly, prayer is not a stand-alone. Prayer without action is passivity. There are those who simply pray and expect for an answer even without lifting a finger or doing something about what they are praying for. This is blind acquiescence.
Thus, prayer should not stand by itself – it should be coupled with appropriate action to win God’s grace.
Fathers Hugh Barbour and Sebastian Walshe, in their book “Twenty Answers: Prayer,” slugged it right by saying, “God, in his wisdom and providence, has determined that there are many things that will be brought about by prayer. Prayer is thus an instrument of God’s supreme causality; that is, prayer is a way that God makes things happen with our cooperation. When we pray and are encouraged to do so by God, it is with this awareness.”
Welcome New Year 2024! Let’s BELIEVE, PRAY, ACT and MAKE THINGS HAPPEN!
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