Be careful what you ask for; you can receive.
In 2014, Matthew Wenke and his wife saw their daughter Nora enter a convent to pursue her religious vocation.
As the doors closed behind the young woman, the family knew that if she persevered, Nora would never again give the air of grace in their house. This is because, in addition to making the usual vows – poverty, chastity, and obedience – the Passionist nuns make a fourth vote: the closing vote.
Wenke, though he was proud of his daughter and happy for her joy, needed time to process everything that was happening because, as he wrote, “When I prayed for vocations, I did not mean that God could take my daughter away from me”.
That’s where the danger lives: “Be careful what you ask for; you can be attended to. ”
We often begin our prayers, saying the first “dangerous” prayer, which is: “Thy will be done.” But we want to attain the grace we seek without having to find the Cross.
I know I do this all the time and I say, “Dear God, teach me to be a better person. Let your will be done, but do not do it in a crazy way, that involves something tragic, okay? I can not handle it. ”
Often, my prayers follow the style of Flannery O’Connor: “Sir, I will never be a saint, but I can be a martyr if they kill me quickly.”
We want all the blessings and preferably with the least possible suffering! We always think, “Please, do not destroy my life!”
In fact, this is the second “dangerous prayer.” In a recent interview with Aleteia, a young Dominican nun revealed that a speaker at a Catholic youth conference had challenged participants to say the following prayer: “O God, ruin my life!” She met the challenge. But after making that audacious and dangerous prayer, his whole world and his prospects changed.
The third dangerous prayer, however, is the one that Fr. Brad Milunski brought in his homily during the First Profession of Sr. Frances Marie of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. Yes, this is the daughter of Matt Wenke, who is walking in his enclosure.
In his homily, Fr. Milunski admits that this is a brave prayer: “Lord, make me yours”:
“When I was starting my parish ministry, I was fortunate to be near a nunnery in New Jersey. The Mother Superior became my spiritual director and shared with me one day that, from the beginning, her only prayer to God was simply this: ‘Make me yours’.
I must confess that I returned to the convent a little scared by this prayer. I was also a little annoyed with myself for not being able to do this prayer without offering God my list of footnotes. I would say, ‘Make me yours, but here are my suggestions, Lord, about how you can do this.’ Maybe it’s a kid thing, but I suspect not. ”
The homily is indeed very good and deserves a thorough and attentive reading.
I barely have the courage to say “Your will, not mine,” although I know that I have control of few things and believe – with all my heart, because I am the true daughter of St. Philip Neri – that “every The purposes of God are for good; although we can not always understand this, we can trust that. ”
I believe this because I have seen in my life how things that were tragic and meaningless ended up serving a much bigger plan than anything I could have dreamed of.
Take the examples of St. Paul and St. Teresa of Calcutta. They, at some point, made their dangerous prayers to God, saying, “Use me.” And they ended up being used.
So let’s follow these examples, but only if we are not afraid of these “dangerous prayers” and their blessings.
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