Why we still pray, even after New Zealand attack

So when I pray after Texas, or after a personal tragedy, or after seeing another loved one be hurt, I don’t do so with an expectation that thisprayer will finally break the cycle of evil and suffering, that never again will I or someone I love be devastated by suffering.

Instead, I try to trust. I remember that Jesus Himself, on the eve of his crucifixion, prayed that “may this cup be taken from me”—and yet He went on to be crucified.

I pray for faith, and for trust, and for understanding and for, if there must be more suffering in my life, that I be able to bear it well—but with a swift caveat that please, God, maybe just don’t make me suffer.

“There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us,” saidJohn Paul II in 1995, speaking at the Orioles Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore. “There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us.”