A priest was giving a talk on Scripture in Canada. After the talk a woman came up and gave him a note to read on his flight home. When the priest was on the plane, he took out the note. It read:
We have had many prayers answered in our family, but none so meaningful as the answer to our daughter’s recovery from an emotional problem. On the twelfth anniversary of my daughter’s emotional illness, I prayed in a special way to Jesus to heal her as he did the woman in the Gospel.
As you recall, the woman in the Gospel believed that if she could only touch his garment, she would be healed. After she touched it, Jesus turned to her and said, “Woman, your faith has healed you.”
With that same kind of faith, I told Jesus that I believed he could heal my sick daughter, and that I had enough faith for both of us. The next day we noticed small, positive signs pointing to her recovery. They continued in the days ahead. And after each one, we thanked Jesus whom we truly believed was answering our prayers. That was six years ago. Today she is a happy young woman. And what is even more marvelous, Jesus is now using her to help other people.
This mother ended the story with this observation:
God cannot answer prayers unless we pray. And if we pray, God will answer our prayers in his own time and often in a way more marvelous than that for which we prayed.
God did this in the case of the mother’s daughter. God used her illness to prepare her to help other people in need.
Saint Paul writes in his Second Letter to the Corinthians:
[God] helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able to help others … using the same help that we ourselves have received from God.
That is a significant statement. Let me repeat it for you:
[God] helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able to help others … using the same help that we ourselves have received from God.
That brings us back to the Canadian mother’s statement that God often answers our prayers in a way more marvelous than what we prayed for. Let us close with a brief meditation. I’m sure many of you are familiar with it. It was found in the pocket of a dead soldier. It reads:
I asked for health, that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things….
I asked for riches, that I might be happy;
I was given poverty, that I might be wise….
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need for God….
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life;
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things….
I got nothing I asked for, but everything I hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among all men most richly blessed.