Friday, January 18, 2008 Roperos: Power of prayer By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
WHEN reports said a few days ago that a priest officiating a children’s mass that was part of the Sinulog celebration urged the kids never to forget to pray, I feel that the suggestion has certainly been long in coming.
What immediately came to mind was the image of kids10 to 15 years old crowding the sidewalks or town markets playing cards or begging or waiting for a chance to pick pockets. One time, I saw two of them sniff rugby by a parked car.
Those are the kids that truly need to learn how to pray or need to be taught how to pray.
There was a time when kids learning how to pray was a natural part of growing up in the towns. I remember that during the summer months, kids in the neighborhood were ordinarily herded to the church for the Catechism classes that would end with the Flores de Mayo.
Well, there is a chance that kids who lives on the streets of our towns and cities do not really know why they should pray. Or what prayer is all about.
At a time when technology has become so advanced, our children are getting all sorts of information from many sources and are influenced by many things, so much so that it is difficult to pinpoint which of these are good or bad information.
When I was a kid in knee pants, there was only the home, the church and the school that became our source of learning. Of course, there was an informal source, the kids in the neighborhood. It was hardly reliable information, coming as it did from our peers who picked them up from sources we know not where.
But prayer was something else. With parents wholly believing that the family that prays together stays together, we were all expected to be in the house at sunset, and attend the prayers at angelus and the early morning that my grandmother was the lead master.
It was the most challenging since one is forced to wake up. And so, I would stay at the back, against the wall and pile up pillows up to the chin while kneeling, then sleep while the prayers were in progress.
Urging our young today to take to prayer seriously is like holding them by the hand and leading them away from all sorts of influences they get from their peers, from the streets, from TV and the girlie-girlie shows in CDs, VCDs and DVDs.
It is, in a way, like a test of the power of prayer.
