An old Cherokee Indian chief was teaching his grandson about life. He said, “A fight is going on inside me,” he told the young boy, “a fight between two wolves. One of the wolves is full of anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other wolf is full of is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you grandson…and inside of every other person on the face of this earth.” The grandson pondered this for a moment and then asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee smiled and simply said, “The one you feed.”
When we hear the parable of the weeds and the wheat there is a tendency to see it as a metaphor for society at large. Over here are the weed people. They are the ones who are full of hostility and anger. They make life difficult for others. They are the ones you’ve got to watch out for. Then there are the wheat people (which, of course, includes us). The wheat people are kind and forgiving. They give to their neighbors and help little old ladies cross the street. They are the salt of the earth. We easily divide the world up into the good and the bad, the white hats and the black hats, the friends and the foes. But what if the parable of the weeds and wheat is not about society at large at all? What if it is, as the Cherokee chief alluded to, descriptions about what is inside each one of us. We all have two wolves inside of us – a weed wolf and a wheat wolf, as it were. We don’t need to look outside of ourselves to find the reason there is so much ugliness and division in the world today. It is inside of us. And we don’t need to look for someone riding in on a white horse to save us. We have the potential in ourselves. How do we make sure that we are feeding the wolf which is life-affirming and love-giving and not the other? Through prayer. When we pray we are choosing to live for God and the things of God.
However, as each of us can testify, prayer is not easy. We are never quite sure if we are, in fact, connecting with God or do we keep referring things back to ourselves? St. Paul points out the problem in his letter to the Romans: “We do not know how to pray as we ought.” How do we pray and how can we do it better? If your prayer is anything like mine it usually begins: Help! Help! Help! While that is certainly a legitimate prayer. After all, St. Paul says that “the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness.” We pray the prayer for help begging God for strength in our weakness. But St. Paul is suggesting that kind of prayer is not enough. We ought to pray more effectively. If we are to feed the wheat-wolf, if we are to make those choices and act in those ways which produce peace and joy, we must learn how to pray as St. Paul understands we should.
What does that look like? For a model let’s take the pre-eminent prayer of the Church: the Mass which we celebrate every Sunday. The Mass that shows us how we ought to pray. First, Mass is known as the Eucharist, that is a prayer of thanksgiving. That suggests that the way we ought to pray is with grateful hearts. Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! Now there are plenty of Help! Help! Prayers in the Mass. Besides the prayers of the faithful we petition God for mercy to start of the Mass. During the Eucharistic prayer we pray for the Holy Father and the bishop. We pray for the faithful departed. We pray for unity in the Church. We pray that we will be welcomed into our heavenly home when our time comes. But all of these prayers of petition, prayers for help during the Mass, are in the context of thanksgiving for what God has already done for us. We remember that Jesus broke bread and shared the cup in a once and for all way that assures us of his ongoing presence. What God has done for us provides the blessed assurance for what God will do for us. The prayers for help, therefore are made with confidence because the God who brought us this far by faith, the God who is with us still in word and sacrament, is not about to leave us now.
Other lessons from the Mass on how we ought to pray: We ought to pray with the Bible. Since God has chosen to reveal the divine word we should be attentive to the revelation in the Scriptures and glean from it a message that God wishes us to hear. We ought to pray together. While it is certainly good and necessary to have our own personal prayer, when we pray together like at the Mass we experience that the way to God is together, as a community. Closely related to that, we ought to invite others to join in our prayer. Our prayer is most effective when it spills over and includes others. And, perhaps must significantly, our prayer ought to be Trinitarian. The prayer of the Mass is addressed to God the Father, in the name of the Son of God, Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. In fact, as St. Paul reminds us, it is the Spirit that does the heavy lifting. We don’t have to be skilled or gifted as pray-ers because “the Spirit intercedes with inexpressible groanings … for the holy ones according to God’s will.” So how ought we to pray? Relying on the Spirit to take our feeble efforts directly to the throne of Grace. To Help! Help! Help! And Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! We must add Wow! Wow! Wow!
