Conclusion

Jesus has taken office from Moses and Eli­jah. He is now in-charge of every law, proph­ets and proph­ecy, and even of every life. Def­in­itely, he did and he is still doing all things well. He is not like many politi­cians and reli­gious lead­ers, who buy their way to the offices just to work only for their selfish interests. In Jesus’ ten­ure, there was no iota of cor­rup­tion. Do not ask me about many of our politi­cians and reli­gious lead­ers. Because I am sure you know them bet­ter than I do. As indic­ated above, Luke under­lines that Jesus went to the moun­tain to pray. And that his trans­form­a­tion took place while he was pray­ing. Do not for­get the import­ance of pray­er in your life. But remem­ber, God answers only the pray­er of a just per­son. Do not pray when you should work, and do not work when you should pray. The prin­ciples of time and sea­son for everything (cf. Eccl 3:1) should be respected.

Is prayer enough?

Today, espe­cially, in most of the Afric­an nations, there is this con­fu­sion and illu­sion that pray­er and pray­er alone resolves everything. This is ridicu­lous. This is false hope. In his open­ing address of the First Plen­ary of the Cath­ol­ic Bish­ops’ Con­fer­ence of Niger­ia (CBCN), 5^th March 2017, the pres­id­ent, Most Rev. Igna­tius Kaigama made an import­ant obser­va­tion on some social issues in the coun­try. In his reflec­tion “on some social issues like the fre­quent state­ment one hears even from some highly placed Nigeri­ans that only pray­er can solve the prob­lems of Niger­ia”, the Arch­bish­op com­ments “the state­ment may be true in one sense but in anoth­er it is not only a fal­lacy but a passing on of the buck. St. James says pray­er and good works must go togeth­er. Lead­ers must there­fore not aban­don their social respons­ib­il­it­ies by amass­ing incred­ible wealth, tak­ing from the poor and yet think­ing that it is God’s duty to care for the poor, the help­less youths, and the needy. There is a raging fire going on and all we say are pray­ers and more pray­ers instead of also look­ing for a buck­et of water to quench the fire! We wor­ship God in exot­ic places of wor­ship spread all over, but fail to seek per­man­ent social rem­ed­ies to our nation­al mal­ad­ies.” This is a naked truth. Accord­ing to the Arch­bish­op, “the state­ment may be true in one sense….”

Per­son­ally, the state­ment that “only pray­er can solve the prob­lems of Niger­ia” is not true in any sense. It is a total fal­lacy. It is an expres­sion, which some god­less and greedy reli­gious lead­ers use to fool their con­greg­a­tion, and empty them of the last naira in their pock­ets. As the arch­bish­op rightly noted, “lead­ers should not aban­don their social respons­ib­il­it­ies” and should stop “tak­ing from the poor”, while deceiv­ing them with the wrong hope that the Lord is their shep­herd. At the same time, people should not aban­don their social respons­ib­il­it­ies, rely­ing only on pray­er and on the assur­ance that for God all things are pos­sible. Pray­er should not be ‘the solu­tion.’ On the con­trary, pray­er should be a way to the solu­tion. Jesus prayed to the Fath­er to enlight­en him on how best to ful­fil his mis­sion. And as stated in the intro­duc­tion, he does not do any­thing unless he con­sults his Fath­er. This is what pray­er should be. It should be a means, not the end. Abram’s jour­ney was not a blind move­ment. The text says the Lord dir­ec­ted him (cf. Gen 12:1–4). Again, Jesus bore his own share of the hard­ship of the Gos­pel with the strength from God (cf. 1Tim 1:8–10). Pray­er and good effort (or good work accord­ing to James) must go/work together.

Pray­ing without sea­son does not mean passiv­ity. The Lat­in adage labor­are et orare (to work is to pray), which prob­ably derived from the Bene­dict­ine monks’ ora et labora (pray and work), remains ever true. Work and pray. Pray and work. Just as faith without true love and good work is dead (1Cor 13:1–3; Jas 2:14–17), so also pray­er without work is not only dead but also sin­ful. “We need to com­bine faith (pray­er) and good works.”^[1] Like the dis­ciples, always remem­ber to show a sense of awe at the pres­ence and majesty of God. While they pros­trated in fear, Jesus touched the dis­ciples, asked them to get up and not be afraid because they were in good hand. In like man­ner, may God touch you and raise you up, take away your many fears because you are also in good hand, I mean in God’s hand. Happy feast of trans­fig­ur­a­tion. Wel­come to the month of August and a blessed week. Sha­lom!

1. A Com­mu­niqué at the end of the First Plen­ary Meet­ing of the Cath­ol­ic Bish­ops’ Con­fer­ence of Niger­ia (CBCN), 4–10 March, 2017, n.7. ↑

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