Last Sunday, I announced at our weekly Sunday Mass in Santa Rosa that today, May 13, we will first pray the rosary, in honor of Our Blessed Mother—May being the month of the Blessed Virgin, and this day as the 101st anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima.

Honestly, I don’t know why, but it came naturally. I told my Sunday Mass community, and I say this with much faith, that maybe the message of Fatima still rings true: Pray for the conversion of Russia.

When the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)—of which Russia was “the boss”—was dissolved in 1991, we thought Fatima’s prayer was fulfilled. Russia, as well as communism, seemed to have gone out of vogue.

But the world’s worst enemy is the complacency of a false sense of triumph and security. Today, 27 years later, Russia dominates the world of intrigue and machinations. But this is not the main point for this Sunday’s reflections.

Today, on the Feast of the Ascension and the 101st anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima, we reflect on prayer turning to deeper prayer.

Relevance, power

Prayer within the context of the Ascension gives it greater relevance and power. In the days leading to the Ascension, culminating in today’s feast, the Risen Lord does two things: First, he entrusts his mission to his community of disciples, and second, he empowers them—us, as the present community of the faithful.

The empowerment is given through two graces: He assures us of the help we need, the Spirit to guide, enlighten, inspire us; and he gives a definitive assurance of our victory in his Cross, Resurrection and Ascension.

As Stephen Covey of “Seven Habits” fame says, 2,000 years later, begin with the end in mind. The Risen Lord did this. We have won victory over sin, death and evil.

At the same time, he also tells us that this will come at a price—a price that he himself paid through his suffering, passion and death on the Cross.

It is this prayer in the context, graces and power of the Ascension that I invite everyone to make today, and in the days to come.

In the uncertainties of this period, in the country and in many parts of the world, we turn to the solitude, the power, and the radical activism of prayer.

Solitude is our response to the noise and disturbances wrought by sociopolitical and economic upheavals.

Not to be oblivious to all these, but to be able to “go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there is in silence.”

It is in the peace of this solitude of prayer that we bring everything to discernment, and ask how we can act with integrity. Yes, integrity—to go back to our core, who we really are as people, Filipinos and Christians.

Core

In rediscovering our core, discern ways of acting and responding that are aligned with, rooted and grounded in our integrity.

The power of prayer is in remembering the promises of the Risen Lord, a promise that begins with his entrusting his mission to us, and the empowerment we earlier mentioned—the power of the Spirit, and the power of the victory of Cross and Resurrection.

With this power of prayer, we come to a choice, a radical choice that leads to radical action. Perhaps even more appropriate is a radical activism as our radical choice leads to a way of life.

Soren Kierkegaard said, “Prayer doesn’t change God. It changes us to be radical activists in the world; to set the world on fire with the love and compassion of the Risen Lord.” —CONTRIBUTED