Peace, No. 15 of 17 No. 15 of 17

The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men presents the Catholic Hour. The Catholic Hour opens with Mr. Nathaniel Sprinzeena and a group of the Polish choristers, singing the poems by for eight. The Catholic Hour opens with the Polish choristers, singing the poems by for eight. The Catholic Hour opens with the Polish choristers, singing the poems by for eight. The Catholic Hour opens with the Polish choristers, singing the poems by for eight. The Catholic Hour opens with the Polish choristers, singing the poems by for eight. The Catholic Hour opens with the Polish choristers, singing the poems by for eight. The Catholic Hour opens with the Polish choristers, singing the poems by for eight. The Catholic Hour opens with the Polish choristers, singing the poems by for eight. Monsignor Fosenje Sheen of the Catholic University of America will now deliver the 15th in his series of 17 addresses on the general subject piece. His discourse today is entitled Prayer in War Time. I present Monsignor Sheen. Friends. In this as in all previous broadcasts, we plead with the Jews and Protestants of the United States to spend an unbroken daily holy hour in prayer and meditation according to the light of their consciences for victory and for peace with justice. And we ask our fellow Catholics in the fullness of their faith in the real presence of our Lord in the blessed sacrament to make a daily holy hour including masks and communion. To aid in this national prayer, we renew our offer to send a holy hour booklet free to anyone who asks for it. The basic reason for this appeal is that our enemies have the devil on their side. And unless we get on God's side, we will never defeat them. Man is no match for the devil. Unless we pray and are converted to the God of justice from the salvation of Jesus Christ, we must envisage the possibility of defeat, hence the importance of prayer. In order to understand the meaning of prayer, it may help to make three observations concerning its nature, two of which are negative. Firstly, the essence of prayer is not petition. The important word here is essence, because petition is the legitimate form of prayer. We live in a conditional universe, and many favors are granted on condition that we pray for them. Our Lord Himself said, ask, and you shall receive. There are many favors hanging from the vault of heaven's blue on silken cords, and prayer is the sword that cuts them. What we are here emphasizing is that we must not pray on the constant assumption that the purpose of prayer is to get something. For if we identify getting with goodness, then when we do not get, we may begin to doubt the goodness of God. We must not identify the goodness of God with His readiness to do whatever we ask. Same James tells us, you ask and do not receive, because you ask amists that you may spend it upon your passions. Many a man in the United States is living with only one eye or one finger simply because his parents gave him exactly what he wanted on the Fourth of July. I am sure that God has never answered and will never answer a bald-headed man's prayer for hair, and a woman could pray from now until the crack of doom, but God will never take the ward off the end of her nose. Think these reflections through and you'll understand why not all prayers are answered. God is omnipotent, yes, he can do all things except one thing. He cannot please everybody. What a terrible world this would be if God answered the selfish prayers of everyone. We who think we could rule the universe better than God. Furthermore, when we pray, we forget that in prayer God supplies our needs, but not always our wants. Our Lord multiplied the loaves and the fishes and gave to every man all that He needed. Suppose, however, that our Lord instead of multiplying bread multiplied gold bricks. How many do you think would have been satisfied with one gold brick? Gold is a once. Red is the need. God satisfies our needs, not our wants. God, if I am Lord said on one occasion, your father knows what you need before you ask him. The problem is then, do I want what he knows I need? Suppose our dear Lord did come to us as we pray for something and said, I will give you anything you want. Choose it. Would we not rather abandon our will and counting on his infinite goodness ask him to do the choosing? At Christmas when someone asks what we want, do we not say you choose? Knowing full well that his generosity will be greater than our daring? Why not begin prayer that way, trusting in God because He knows what is best? Secondly, prayer is not an insurance policy or a bombproof shelter, a bulletproof vest or a germicide. This observation for those who think that God should suspend the operation of His natural laws every time they get in trouble. Did He, on Calvary, suspend the law that a nail hit on the head by a hammer would pierce a hand or a foot? The very ones who in time of peace think the business of God is to ensure prosperity are the very ones who in time of adversity think the business of God is to grant immunity from harm. Some prayers are nothing else but selfish expressions of the self-preservation instinct. Did not our Lord say that the sun shines on the just and the wicked? Therefore may we not expect bombs to fall on the wicked and the just? If this world were all, if man had no immortal soul, if the scales of justice were not balanced beyond the grave, if the loss of physical life were a greater evil than sin, then the goodness of God could be identified with good health. That bank deposits and our freedom from wounds. But since this world is a proving ground of character, it must never be assumed that catastrophe is a special sign of sin. Our divine Lord never spoke of perishing in the physical sense, but in the spiritual. When the Pharisees asked Rabbi, who is sinned? This man nor his parents, that he should be born blind, and our Lord answered, neither this man seemed nor his parents. But the works of God were to be made manifest in him. The best lies, therefore, are not always saved in battle. Otherwise, the heroes who die in battle, and whose names we inscribe on our war memorials with all be wicked men. A Saint Francis of Thessalonica in our front line, French, would have no guarantee that God would deflect, I'd bullet, to protect his life. But this much we could be sure of. No matter what would happen, nothing could ever turn Saint Francis away from God. For a Saint Paul says, now we know that for those who love God, all things work together and too good. For those who according to His purpose are saved through His call. Please do not misunderstand me. It is right, and it is just that we should pray for the safety of our loved ones. But we must not think of prayer always in terms of the suspension of a natural law or as a kind of safety device. A chaplain in the last world war said that he heard some men pray as they went over the top. When he wished that they had gone over the top without a prayer, for their prayer was a mark of a broken will, a selfish desire, and a fear of death, a whimpering of formulas for personal protection in time of crisis. The man alongside of him, whose sin, unbroken and unbeaten, Boris gunned like a saber Boris Saur, scared against the thieves, would put that whimpering man to shame. A prayer for personal safety in time of great crisis when moral issues are a stake is not what a man ought to be thinking about. It entails putting a greater value on physical life, the non-tuty and on justice. The martyrs of old, who were stretched on rack tortured and burned, were all men of prayer. They prayed for deliverance like their saviour in the garden, but they would not take it at the cost of faith. Or the denial of the Christ whom they bore in their souls. That was too high a price to pay for saving their skins. So they lost their skins and saved their souls. The answer to prayer then is not the escape from death, but the power to face it with trust in God. When this brings us to our third point, what prayer really is? Name me the lifting up of our hearts and our minds to God. More simply still, prayer is commune with God. It is something like you're listening to me on this radio. You want it to get in touch with me today. You are listening. We will not go into the question why you did. It is important that you do not have to do with the analogy. But I can think of one good reason why you all ought to listen to me. Blint to season of penance. Now a prayer is like tuning in on the radio. It is a means of giving God access to your souls. In order to tune in the radio program, you must set your dial to the proper wavelength. In light manner, in order to tune into God, you must make your will correspond to His divine will. Once this is done, just as you listen to the radio program to which you are attuned, so now you become obedient to the divine will to which your soul is attuned. Once the wavelength of our will is adjusted to the wavelength of God's will, we get what we want. Then all prayers are answered. The program is just exactly what we want it. Prayer that is not asking God to do our will, it is asking God to do His will. The purpose of prayer is not to change God's will, it is rather to change our will. We do not go to God with the blueprint of our desires and then ask God to rubber stamp them. Rather we ask God to give us His blueprint. And then we mobilize all our energies with His grace to fulfill it, instead of Him approving our plans, we approve His. In more time, the proper approach is to ask God to use our collective wills and our national arms for His holy purposes, rather than to ask God to serve our purposes. We do not ask God to fight on our side. We pray to fight on God's side. We pray not as Americans who happen to be Christians. We pray as Christians who happen to be Americans. We ask God to do something for us in order to true us. We might work for the betterment of the world and the restoration of the moral order. The essence of prayer, therefore, is the longing at all costs to be caught up in God's purposes. I know a little child who at Christmas time prayed for a thousand dolls, but she did not receive them. And her unbelieving father, who was constantly ridiculing prayer, one day stintically said to her, God did not answer your prayers, did He? And which the child gave the glorious answer? Oh, yes, He did. He said, no. That was the child's way of putting what our Savior expressed in the garden centuries ago. He prayed that the chalice of suffering might pass if it be possible, He said. It was possible. His father could have done it. Twelve legions of angels, He said, could have routed His foes. But it would have been at the cost of not redeeming man. The divine purpose mattered more than his personal safety. God said, no. His prayer was answered, not my will, but thy will be done. And is not that the way we pray? Every time we say they are father, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Do we mean it? There's the answer to those who ask. Such a question is this. The Germans pray to God, the English pray to God, the Italians pray to God, the Americans pray to God, on whose side is God. Those who ask that question have not the major side dear, the meaning of prayer. They assume that God takes sides on the basis of geography, rather than on the basis of goodness. But the answer to the question is that God is on the side of those who do His will. That is why we began a crusade among Jews, Protestants, and our fellow Catholics, to pray in our day that God's will will be done amongst us. For if we are with God, no man can be against us. Hence, if the German, the Englishman, the Italian and the American are prayed as they should, they would all be praying for identically the same intention, thy will be done. On earth as it is in heaven, there would be perfect unity on both sides of the battlefront. Then we would have peace, peace on earth to men of goodwill. Prayer then does not so much help our conduct, as our conduct tests our prayers. If we think right, we will live right. The greatest stupidity I think that was ever uttered was this. It makes no difference what you believe, with only how you act. Nonsense. We act on our beliefs, and if our beliefs are wrong, we'll act wrongly. Prayer comes before conduct. Live with the God of love in prayer, and you'll act lovingly toward your neighbors. Seek with the Christ on His cross, and you'll be charitable to your neighbors. Your actions tell whether you ever pray or not. Not your ears. Prayer is not getting something, it is becoming something. When we become good and glorify His name, then we get not only what we need, but what we ask. And we have His word for it. Amen, amen, I say to you. If you ask the Father anything in my name, in my name, He will give it to you. Pray then that we may be victorious by being on God's side. Begin your prayer with a monologue with God, and it will end with a dialogue between you and the God who redeems you. Not only speak to God, also listen, do not do all the talking. It is not polite. And let us pray for one reason in this holy hour. To bring ourselves in communion with a purpose, God's purpose, God's will. That is what most of us lack in our lives. A goal, a destiny, a loyalty beyond all fleeting enthusiasm. If we are unhappy, there's one basic reason for it. It is because our purpose is at odds with God's purpose, which is best for us. We are crisp cross because we deny the value of the cross. You carry a watch, but you do not make your own time. You take it from the sky. You make your own journeys, but you do not draw your own maps. You take them from the world. You live your own life, but you do not make your own perfection. You take it from God. Therefore, pray. Pray an hour a day. God love you. O Lord Jesus Christ, who in diameter see hear of the prayers of sinners. For a fourth we besiege say all grace and blessing upon our country and its citizens. We pray in particular for the President, for our Congress, for all our soldiers, for all who defend us in shifts, whether on the seas or in the skies, for all who are suffering the hardships of war, we pray for all who are in peril or in danger. Bring us after the troubles of this life into the haven of peace and reunite us all together forever, O dear Lord, in thy glorious heavenly kingdom. The address you have just heard was entitled Prayer in War Time and was delivered by a monsenier fullton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America. This was the fifteenth in monsenier Sheen series of seventeen addresses on peace. A copy of today's talk, or of a holy album described by a monsenier Sheen, may be obtained by writing to the National Council of Catholic Men, Washington, D.C., or to the station to which you are now listening. Next we hear In Gradyente, a race-banzoria which is sung for the procession immediately preceding Mass on Palm Sunday. In Gradyente, a race of a song which was sung for the procession immediately preceding Mass on Palm Sunday. This was the third verse of the verse of the song, which is sung for the procession of the song, which is sung for the procession of the song. I, O Lord, forgive me, forgive me! Next Sunday at this time, Monsignor Sheen will deliver another address in this series entitled, The Resurrection. He will also give a good Friday talk next Friday evening at 10.30pm Eastern War time. Over some of these stations, entitled The Crucetiction. Your answer is John Patrick Costello. The Catholic Hour has been presented by NBC in cooperation with National Council of Catholic Men as a public service and came to you from New York.