Can prayer change reality?

I may have mentioned before that one of my hobbies is listening to NDEs (near death experiences) on Youtube.  Mostly I consider it entertainment to pass the time when I am doing some boring mindless task. I don't view these accounts as holy writ or anything, but once in a while they lead to some insights. 

I find that all the accounts are different, but they all have some things in common. Those would be, a cessation of pain, a sense of profound peace and love, taking place outside of time. The narrators mention meeting a being of light, sometimes calling this entity God, or Jesus, or saying that it is an angel. I am aware that there are some unpleasant NDEs, but I don't go looking for those. I assume there must be a reason for them, but most of the accounts are positive.

Anyway, the latest NDE I listened to was this one:  I Saw How Prayer Actually Changes Reality (NDE)

The narrator was a woman who identified herself as Alice Carter.  She said she had been injured in a bad car wreck caused by a semi driver who fell asleep on the road and crossed the center line.  She was taken to a hospital and the doctors said that she had been clinically dead at one point for over 7 minutes.  

Following is a summary of her account:

How Successfully Does Christian Apologetics Deal with "Ask and You Shall Receive"?

 I asked ChatGPT the following: 

What do Christian apologists say about the unequivocal promises made by Jesus in the Gospels such as "ask and you shall receive," or "ask the Father for anything in my name and he will give it to you"?

ChatGPT said:

Great question — this is one of the classic challenges in Christian theology and apologetics, because the promises in passages like Matthew 7:7, John 14:13–14, and John 16:23–24 do appear, on the surface, to be absolute (“Ask and it will be given to you... whatever you ask in my name, I will do it”).

Apologists — both scholarly and pastoral — have developed several interpretive approaches to reconcile these verses with the reality that many prayers go unanswered. I’ll summarize the main lines of reasoning:

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1. Contextual and Conditional Reading

Apologists often argue these statements weren’t meant as blanket guarantees.

• Alignment with God’s will

  • Key argument: “In my name” is not a magical formula but shorthand for “in alignment with my will and character” (cf. 1 John 5:14–15: “If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”).

  • Example: William Lane Craig argues that prayer isn’t an unconditional promise but a participation in God’s purposes.

• Audience and setting

  • Some note Jesus was addressing disciples in a specific apostolic context (John 14–16), promising them divine support for their mission, not an open-ended guarantee for every request.

Prayers of petition

This is my homily for yesterday, the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.  Yesterday's readings are here.

Happy feast day of Sts. Anne and Joachim

 

Sts. Anne and Joachim are the patrons of grandparents.  Which we are, and several people on New Gathering also are.  Also St. Anne would be the patron of our Anne. So happy feast day!

My mom had a devotion to St. Anne, and chose her as her confirmation saint. She was 32 at the time, but since then lived to have 12 grandchildren. Now she would have 19 great grandchildren, though she didn't live to see any of them. 

Mom visited the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec, on the trip she took to Canada.  She went with one of her sisters, who probably didn't visit the shrine, since at that time she was a bit agnostic and didn't have much use for Catholicism, and even less for the evangelical tradition she grew up in. Dad didn't like to travel, though he could be talked into it, if the destination was in easy driving distance and involved pretty scenery or and interesting historical site. Canada is not an easy driving distance from Nebraska, so he wasn't along on that trip.

Anyway, Mom happened to visit the shrine on Mother's Day, which is the same in Canada as it is here. They gave out little ribbons to the mothers in attendendance, which had printed on them, "Bonne fete Maman" in gold letters.

In the current issue of Commonweal, Mary Gordon has a piece remembering the trip her family took to St. Anne de Beaupre when she was a child.  Interesting memories, but her dad certainly was a character. A good father, but would have driven me crazy as a husband. 

Pilgrimage | Commonweal Magazine

BTW, the statue pictured is in the side chapel in our parish, St. Anne and the child Mary.

Managing MAGA

Who is actually driving the MAGA bus?

Recurring dream

I had a dream last night which I have from time to time.  It's not always the same, but the gist of it is: I've moved back into the dormitory I lived in as an undergraduate.  In these dreams, apparently I'm not a husband and a father, but I've moved on in my life from college - I'm too old to be living in the dorms.  It's like: I've already put in my time here; why am I back again?  I spend a lot of time wandering the halls, trying to figure out which room is my room.  Although this part didn't happen last night, there also is often an element in which I'm searching for my college classroom.  I wander down to Lake Michigan (Loyola Chicago's Lakeshore Campus is on the lakefront, although the campus in my dreams is not exactly the real campus - more of a nightmarish composite of some neighborhoods in Chicago I lived in as a young adult).

When I was a younger adult, I used to have one or two variations of a somewhat different college-related dream: it is Finals Week at college, and I have come to realize I have an upcoming final in a class which, for some reason, I've forgotten to attend all semester.  I spend a lot of time trying to find the classroom.  I read a long time ago that Finals-related dreams are common among people who have gone to college.  I believe the idea is: we dream about things that cause us stress, and for many of us, a college final is among the more stressful events in our lives (at least up to that point in our lives).  It may be that the stress continues to haunt us for years after we've lived through that period of our lives.

That said: I'm not sure what the living-back-in-the-dorms dream is supposed to signify.  Maybe it was more stressful for me than I realized to be living away from home for the first time.  My father was so homesick when he went away to college that he left college and came back home after a semester.  

Any idea what my dorm dream means?  And do you have recurring dreams?

Original Goodness

 In the thread on sin, I refer to a book called Original Goodness, written by a Hindu scholar who taught meditation to his American students at Cal.  Since his primary audience was Christian, he used the wisdom teachings and understandings of mystics from several religions, but mostly Christians, in his books. After recalling the provocative title that originally drew me to his book, Original Goodness, I took it off my shelf to read again after 20 or so years.  I knew it was about the beatitudes, but his title implies that he was would offer broad insight into human nature, including sin.  I couldn’t remember how he worked that into his notion of original goodness.  Here are a few excerpts from the introductory chapter.

 Original Goodness by Eknath Easwaran.

Too much about sin?

Every cradle Catholic of a certain age understands what is meant by Catholic guilt. The emphasis on sin - starting with forcing seven year olds to confess their sins to a priest - haunts many Catholics. After Vatican II, most Catholics got fed up and simply stopped worrying about confessing their sins to another human being. I guess they were finally growing up on their own because VII didn’t say much about confession that I can recall. Anyway, most  Catholics finally realized that God  hears us, knows our souls, and our sins, and a human intermediary not only isn’t needed by God, they have often done plenty of harm in those confessional booths. Apparently there is also a lot of mis-information provided to converts  in RCIA programs.

Gratitude from a tennis player

Photo by Andrew Coulter/Reuters at CNN's story:

 https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/12/sport/amanda-anisimova-wimbledon-final-defeat-spt

This past Saturday, Iga Swiatek and Amanda Anisimova (pictured above) played for the Wimbledon's women's singles title.  It was quite one-sided, with Poland's Swiatek defeating the America Anisimova in straight sets, 6-0, 6-0.  

Perhaps more impressive to me than Swiatek's nearly perfect performance was Anisimova's grace under pressure in the post-match interview.  When I watched it, her inclination to graciously thank everyone she could think of (including Swiatek) really impressed me - more than impressed me.  For a 23-year-old person in such a pressure-cooker situation to behave so maturely and with such gratitude makes me think she is a remarkable person.  I've become an Amanda Anisimova fan.  The video of her remarks is here.  If it is helpful, you can turn on closed captioning by hovering your mouse on the video; a CC button appears in the lower-right corner.

I wrote up more background for the match; it's below the break, in case those details interest you.  But the video is what I really want to call your attention to; feel free to skip the rest of the post if you wish.

Do we still have religious freedom?

 On the NCR site today:

California bishops scramble to tend to Catholics feeling 'hunted' by ICE agents | National Catholic Reporter

Whether we still have religious freedom is a legitimate question to ask, if people are in fear of being harassed and arrested at their place of worship.

From the article:

Married former priests

An organization of former priests finds it is no longer needed.

Free to worship

This is my homily for today, Independence Day 2025.  I'm not able to post a link to the readings used today, because the choice of readings are a little (or a lot) complicated.  I'll explain them in a comment (to the best of my understanding) if/when I get a chance.  We ended up using these readings today:

1st reading: Isaiah 57:15-19

Responsorial Psalm: selected verses from Psalm 85

2nd reading: Philippians 4:6

Gospel Acclamation: John 14:27 ("Peace I leave with you, says the Lord, My peace I give you")

Gospel: John 14:23-29.  

Coincidentally, this same Gospel passage was assigned for the 6th Sunday in Easter back on May 25th; I was assigned to preach that day, too, but it was for a children's mass so I geared my homily to the kids (it involved having the kids play a game and it was a little chaotic, so I didn't post anything here; you had to be there to get the full experience of it).   So today I got a second shot at the same text, this time to a mostly-adult congregation.  

At any rate, here is the homily:

Archbishop Wester: the Big Beautiful Bill a "Moral Failure"

Earlier today, Senate Republicans passed a version of the GOP's massive budget-reconciliation legislation, dubbed The Big Beautiful Bill in homage to President Trump.  

The bill represents Trump's signature legislative achievement for this term in office.  It adds or subtracts funding for many areas of public life: taxation, border policy and immigration, military spending, Medicaid, food assistance, clean energy programs, the debt ceiling, and more.

The House had passed its own version of the bill on May 22nd.  The two chambers will now need to cooperate to come up with a reconciled piece of legislation for President Trump to sign.  It's quite possible that Republicans won't meet the July 4th artificial deadline imposed by their leadership, but in my view it is a virtual certainty that they will meet somewhere in the middle, and President Trump will sign whatever they come up with.

In America Magazine, in an article written before today's passage of the Senate version, and the all-night session that preceded it, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, NM characterizes the legislation as a "moral failure".  The article's headline: "Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ betrays the poor. The church must oppose it."