by MaryAnn Gardner

Maybe it’s because my husband works for a phone company that I’m inclined to suggest we need only place a call to God and He will answer. The nice part is, you can dial His number any time. It’s a wireless connection, and, you don’t even need a phone. All you need do to call God, is begin to pray.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says prayer is our response to God’s call of love. It also says, "Man may forget his Creator or hide far from his face; he may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him; yet the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer."

In thinking about that, I realized why you and I feel such a need to get together and pray for prodigal Catholics. It has less to do with our seeing the need for such prayer—and has much more to do with God’s calling to all of us.  He isn't just calling me and you and all who have become part of the Marian Mantle Group. He isn’t just calling us to pray for those beloved prodigals of ours. He is also calling to those prodigals.

He is calling them to come back to Him, to respond to Him. He is calling them to prayer. God may be calling, but at the moment our prodigals aren’t listening to Him any more than they are listening to us. So, God is reaching out to them through those of us who love them enough to persevere in prayer for them. Maybe we must first answer His call and pray for them, so that their hearts will receive sufficient grace to be softened and opened enough to answer that same call! 

Let us continue in prayer until they believe that God loves them so much that they decide to return His call.

God wants us to place that call so much, that He even gives us His phone number. It’s Jeremiah 33:3, "Call to me, and I will answer you; I will tell to you things great beyond reach of your knowledge." ♥