Doctors Without Borders is a well-known organization that ministers to the sick and suffering wherever they may be found. I discovered that there is also a similar organization known as Carpenters Without Borders who were involved with the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Both these groups offer their help beyond the national borders of their members. This is a reassuring reminder that national and legal boundaries, however solid they may appear, yield to the goodwill of those who want to come to the aid of others.

These groups, with their ability to transcend the parameters set by human laws, came forcibly to my mind with the news of the recent buffer zone law in England and Wales aimed at protecting abortion clinics from harassment. The proposed law, now in force, had been in the news in recent years with the arrests of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, Adam Smith-Connor, and, earlier, of Fr. Sean Gough, all charged with praying silently near abortion clinics.

I am a contemplative nun, and I sometimes think of myself as a “professional pray-er”, one whose life is totally focused on prayer. I find the whole idea of a buffer zone against prayer to be tremendously amusing! As though laws can keep prayer out! The whole life of contemplative nuns is a life of prayer for all those in need throughout the world, and we contemplatives know well that space and time can never limit prayer. For the most part, we contemplatives live within the enclosure walls of our cloisters, and we virtually never come anywhere near the people we are praying for. In spite of that, people consistently thank us for our prayers, so it seems that they benefit from them in spite of distance in either time or space.

There are those who will pooh-pooh the whole idea of prayer having any effect on anything. But that idea has already been totally undermined by the arrests of pray-ers. If praying doesn’t have any effect, then it is meaningless to arrest someone because they are praying. Just let them continue their useless activity. But those who want to stop people from praying obviously believe that prayer does have an effect, even when it is silent.

I believe that there are some 37,000 Catholic contemplative nuns around the world, and there are more of us who belong to other denominations. That adds up to a lot of prayers offered up for the world and its needs. Pope Francis just promulgated the Encyclical Letter Dilexit Nos on devotion to the Sacred Heart. We contemplatives know well the power of the Sacred Heart! It was expressed most accurately by Edith Stein, also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, one of the Co-Patronesses of Europe, when she wrote: “Through the power of the cross you can be present wherever there is pain carried there by your compassionate charity, by that very charity which you draw from the divine heart.”  We contemplatives are present to support every mother struggling in any way as she carries a child beneath her heart. We are with her and her child in prayer, with all the power of God’s own love.

But people don’t realize that we are with them. Many people don’t know that contemplative nuns still exist in this present age. Still less do they realize what we can accomplish. I would love to see reminders plastered on walls from London and Birmingham to New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and all the places in between: “Contemplative nuns pray silently for each expectant Mother and her child!” People need to know that they are not alone!

There is nothing new in all this. Dickens said it all years and years ago, and it is brought home to Scrooge and to us each year as with him we accompany the Ghost of Christmas Present on his rounds throughout the earth: “Much they saw and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. …In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing…” And so , too, do we with our prayers.

For more information, please contact contemplativesforlife@gmail.com

Image: “St Therese in York Minster” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by Catholic Church (England and Wales) catholicrelics.co.uk

Liked this post? Take a second to support Where Peter Is on Patreon!

Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D.

Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.