Be Careful What You Pray

Clear Love for Confused Parents ‘is a book about conversion. But not just about the conversion of someone else. It’s primarily about yours.’

—From the Foreword of Clear Love for Confused Parents, Fr. Paul Scalia.

I was bemused after the prayerfully awaited conversation with my child. My persuasive tactics had flipped into the kid telling me of the wound I had inflicted. Ouch. How did I become the bad news in light of my buoyant effort to bring the good? Whose converting who?

Jesus always employs our evangelistic prayers and actions toward loved ones to convert, well, us. At least us first. It’s good, painful fun. Go with it.

Monica went to great lengths to impart Jesus to her idolatrous son, Augustine, but glimpsed her own unconverted parts in the effort. She helped win him for Christ (we’ve all benefited!), but in the end, she had to answer for herself before God. Jesus engaged her alone. I doubt He asked mother about her son’s conversion. Judgment was about the integrity of hers, like it is for each one of us.

My friend (I am grateful to say that), Father Paul Scalia, wrote a fine foreword to Clear Love for Confused Parents about Monica’s conversion. He writes of how she became better through interceding for him. He claims God saves us as we implore Him to save more obvious sinners. Touché.

I am including his Foreword in the hope that you will order the whole, modest (only 75 pages) book (pre-order on DSM or available now on Amazon).

BTW: look up Father Paul Scalia, son of the late great Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Paul is a Christian to know and trust. I met him at a Courage Conference (he was the priest assigned to ensure robust Courage groups in Arlington, VA; he simply imparts healing and formation to many strugglers) over a decade ago, where his humble, whip-smart humanity shone through his teaching. Check out his eulogy for his father. Incredible. Annette and I got saved again through it.

Here’s the Foreword:

Without Monica, no Augustine. That’s true in the natural order and, on Augustine’s own testimony, in the supernatural as well. She who gave birth to him would not rest until she had brought him to Baptism’s waters of rebirth. She prayed, pleaded with others, and even pursued her son abroad (the last not being behavior I would recommend!). Thus, she who prayed her wayward son into the Church has become a great consolation and inspiration for parents whose children have likewise strayed.

But perhaps we don’t realize just how great an example she is. For in the end Monica had to undergo her own conversion. It wasn’t enough for her to want him to change. She needed to change as well. Her willingness to be changed certainly helped her prayer for her son. And it provides us an example on how we should pray.

Early in his Confessions, Augustine tells us that his mother “had fled out of the centre of Babylon, but she still lingered in its outskirts.” That is, she had left the world of sin to follow Christ…but was still making her way and had not yet been fully converted. She still had a worldly way of thinking about things, including about what was good for her son. Augustine remarks that both his parents were “unduly set upon the success of my studies.” Yes, Monica wanted her son’s conversion. But she still wanted his worldly advancement.

Later on, when Augustine snuck away to Rome, the situation looked more hopeless to Monica than ever before. She was still not trusting entirely in God. Still in need of conversion. She was trying to hold on to him in her own way while God was preparing to restore him to her in a greater way. For that to happen, something needed to change in him…but in her as well.

This is a book about conversion. But not just the conversion of someone else. It’s primarily about your conversion, about your deepened capacity to trust in the Lord and the mysterious working of His Providence.

There’s a progression in prayer that we all need to make when a loved one strays. We begin to pray (perhaps with more than a little anger), “Fix it.” And we think we know how it ought to be fixed and what the finished product should look like. If only He would ask us!

When that bossy prayer fails, we begin to pray with greater trust: “Lord, you take care of it, because I cannot.” But even that prayer can focus more on our own inability than His power.

So we need to go even deeper and pray, “Lord, change me.” When we are changed by Him, then we become not only better examples of Christian life but also greater vessels of prayer.

All of which is a reminder that there’s no such thing as detached prayer. When we intercede for others, we implicitly open ourselves up to be changed as well. We never just drop our prayers into the coin slot and expect our desired result. No, it’s the Holy Spirit Who prays within us—Who intercedes from within us.

May this book be for you a help to that change, so that the challenge before you will shape you—as it did Monica—into a greater disciple of Christ.

Very Rev. Paul D. Scalia 

---

Father Scalia studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He was ordained in 1996 and is currently Pastor of Saint James Parish in Falls Church. He also serves as the Episcopal Vicar for Clergy, Director of the Permanent Diaconate Formation Program. He has written for various publications including First Things, Communio, The Register and The Catholic Thing. He is the author of That Nothing May Be Lost: Reflections on Catholic Doctrine and Devotion (Ignatius Press, 2017) and editor of Sermons in Times of Crisis: Twelve Homilies to Stir Your Soul (Saint Benedict Press, 2019).