From the Editor
Welcome to the August Edition of the Peasant Times-Dispatch. The summer heat is at peak, and the Times-Dispatch is once more having an exciting time! You have surely noticed the new posting schedule by now, where I am posting every 5 days. This schedule is helpful for me, to allow more time to think and write about each series, and I hope it is helpful to you in the form of higher quality content.
Among that content, we have The Adventures of Tylus Worran, the sixth episode of which published on the 5th; and the Peasant Life Dialogues, the second installment of which will come later this month. The Peasant Podcast I experimented with a longer-form, more relaxed discussion, and a new series will be coming at the end of August which I am excited to introduce.
But importantly, it is worth noting that beginning September 1 I will begin a subscription drive I am billing as SUBTEMBER. SUBtember will be all about you, and will feature some special posts and some interesting promos throughout the month. Expect a busy month of solicitation but I hope you will find it all both respectful and worthwhile.
I am exceedingly happy with the work happening here and I am happy to share it all with you. Thank you, as always, for reading, and God Bless you!
Prayer
Do you pray? When I am stressed, tired, busy—really, any adjective, my prayer life seems to be the first thing to go. It takes up too much time, I don’t feel like it, blah blah blah. The excuses flow like a river—in the times when I most need God’s help.
And when evening was come, he went forth out of the city. And when they passed by in the morning they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter remembering, said to him: Rabbi, behold the fig tree, which thou didst curse, is withered away.
And Jesus answering, saith to them: Have the faith of God. Amen I say to you, that whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed and be cast into the sea, and shall not stagger in his heart, but believe, that whatsoever he saith shall be done; it shall be done unto him.
Therefore I say unto you, all things, whatsoever you ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive; and they shall come unto you. And when you shall stand to pray, forgive, if you have aught against any man; that your Father also, who is in heaven, may forgive you your sins. But if you will not forgive, neither will your Father that is in heaven, forgive you your sins.
Earlier, Christ had passed by a fig tree hoping for some refreshment, and the fig tree disappointed him, so he cursed it. Here, Peter recalls the experience, amazed. Jesus reminds him that he shouldn’t be THAT amazed—in short, “believe in your heart that whatever you say will be done, shall be done”. This works in parallel with the faith of a mustard seed, which can move mountains, or the parable of the friend at midnight. Repeatedly, Christ tells us: if we only believe, we will receive.
Now, God is not a slot machine—you don’t deposit a prayer and hope for a jackpot to change your life forever. God can do that, but more often than not God leads us to the ‘pot o’ gold’ by other roads, roads we often can’t see except in hindsight. If we only believe that what God is doing for is is best for us, then we will suddenly not be troubled by the world. I can imagine a reframing of this scripture: Peter says, ‘Rabbi, my prayer from earlier, it was answered!’ and Jesus replies, ‘have the faith of God!’
An interesting thing it is easy to forget about sometimes is intercessory prayer. In life, we ask for help all the time. We ask for help reaching things in high places, we ask for financial help when we fall on hard times, we ask for help navigating strange roads late at night. In all of these things, we ask for a close friend who perhaps knows a little more than we do to help us. This is like the intercession of the Saints. We know that death is not the end, but the beginning of a new eternal life, in the presence of God. The saints are those who the Church acknowledges are already with God, and they can help us pray for God’s help. They are like our copilot on those dark roads, our friend willing to spare a dollar, our friend who can reach to the highest of places. The saints love to help us, and we can rely on them to put in a good word for us to God.
It’s not only the saints, though: We can also ask for help from the souls in purgatory, and from Angels.
The souls in purgatory are future saints—they have a time of purification before they get to be in the presence of God. We can pray to help them ease or shorten their time of purification, and then they can put in a good for us once they are through it and finally in the presence of God. The souls in purgatory harbor many, many graces for us and are eager to help us.
The Angels are God’s special creation, numerous beyond human comprehension. Each of us has a Guardian Angel. A friend of mine says that he sometimes prays that, when he wants to get to know someone better, he asks for his guardian angel to befriend theirs so they will ease the way between them. There are angels for almost everything we can think of. There’s also special angels named in scripture: St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and St. Raphael, among them. St. Michael keeps away evil, St. Gabriel the messenger who announced the good news to Mary, St. Raphael heals and helps travelers.
As a peasant, it is important that we ask for help—we need it from our community and we need it from the communion of Saints. Our first recourse should always be to God in our necessity, and then we can ask the Saints and Angels to pray for us too, so we can be to God as the friend at midnight—incessantly bothering him from all sides with our prayers, so that he will give us what we need. Indeed, as Christ says—if we but believe, it shall be done.
Thank You
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this issue of the Peasant Times-Dispatch, and I hope you will stick with me for SUBtember. Do you pray? Tell us about your prayer routine, maybe your advice will help me, or even someone reading this!
Ad Jesum Per Mariam