The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 331: The Foundations of Prayer (2025)

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Do we know how to pray? The Catechism depicts Moses learning how to pray and uses this as an example of prayer and relationship with God. The Catechism goes on to talk about David and his experiences with prayer and the Psalms. As Fr. Mike points out, “humility is the foundation of prayer,” and we need honesty, trust, and a willingness to engage in order to pray and approach God as he is. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2574-2580. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in the Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 331. We're reading paragraphs 2574 to 2580, as always. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a foundation of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com

slash CIY, and you can click follow or subscribe to podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications because today is the last day on my Catechism in a year reading plan. It is the last day of the second to last sheet. So tomorrow, fresh sheet, last sheet. Incredible. We're checking off, checking, clicking off the days. We're going through the days. Day 331.

Today we're going to continue talking about prayer. Yesterday we talked about the prayer of creation, you know, that sense of like anyone at any time can recognize God's existence and would respond to him. And in some way, in some certain way, because we're creatures of God, the creator, in some kind of relationship with him, obviously. Then God reveals himself in this powerful way to Abraham. And now we're going to take the next step and talk about God and relationship with Moses and with David and the prayer of the king. How did Moses pray? What was David's prayer like? We have four paragraphs on Moses and three paragraphs on David, so we're not going to dive

as deeply as deeply as possible into those prayers, but we're talking about this story of salvation in the way in which prayer has been revealed, prayer has been taught to us, and it's been participated in in the covenant history. So as we jump into today and looking at more prayer, Moses the prayer of the mediator and David the prayer of the king, we recognize that here we are. We are men and women who have been called to intercede on behalf of others. we've been called to live as kings and queens in Christ's kingdom. And so we pray like that.

We pray in mediation and we pray as royalty as part of God's family. We approach our Father in heaven now. Father in heaven, we praise and glorify you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing us to this day. Thank you so much for inviting us into this relationship with you that is called prayer. Thank you for moving first. Thank you for inviting us to respond.

And thank you for the grace of being able to say yes. to your invitation. In all things, Lord God, help us to say us to you. In all things, help us to constantly be attentive to your initiative. And in all things, help us to never stop listening for your voice. And when we hear your voice, help us to respond with our whole heart. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, it is a 331. We are reading paragraphs 2574 to 2580. Moses and the Prayer of the Mediator Once the promise begins to be fulfilled Passover, the Exodus, the gift of the law and the ratification of the covenant, the prayer of Moses becomes the most striking example of intercessory prayer which will be fulfilled in the one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.

Here again, the initiative is gods. From the midst of the burning bush he calls Moses. This event will remain one of the primordial images of prayer in the spiritual tradition of Jews and Christians alike. When the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob calls Moses to be his servant, it is because he is the living God who wants men to live. God reveals himself in order to save them, though he does not do this alone or despite them. He calls Moses to be his messenger, an associate in his compassion, his work of salvation. There is something of a divine plea in this mission. And only after long debate does Moses attune his own will to that of the Savior God.

But in the dialogue in which God confines in him, Moses also learns how to pray. He balks, makes excuses, above all questions, and it is in response to his question that the Lord confides his ineffable name, which will be revealed through his mighty deeds. Thus, the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Moses' prayer is characteristic of contemplative prayer by which God's servant remains faithful to his mission. Moses converses with God often and at length, climbing the mountain to hear and entreat him and coming down to the people to repeat the words of his God for their guidance. Moses is entrusted with all my house.

With him I speak face to face, clearly, not in riddles, for Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth. From this intimacy with the faithful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, Moses drew strength and determination for his intercession. He does not pray for himself. but for the people whom God made his own. Moses already intercedes for them during the battle with the Amalekites and prays to obtain healing for Miriam. But it is chiefly after their apostasy

that Moses stands in the breach before God in order to save the people. The arguments of his prayer for intercession is also a mysterious battle will inspire the boldness of the great intercessors among the Jewish people and in the church. God is love. He is therefore righteous and faithful. He cannot contradict himself. He must remember his marvelous deeds, since his glory is at stake, and he cannot forsake this people that bears his name. David and the prayer of the king. The prayer of the people of God flourishes in the shadow of God's dwelling place, first the ark of the covenant and later the temple. At first, the leaders of the people, the shepherds and the prophets, teach them to pray. The infant Samuel must have learned from his mother Hannah how to stand before

the Lord, and from the priest Eli, how to listen to his word. Speak, Lord. for your servant is listening. Later, he will also know the cost and consequence of intercession. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you, and I will instruct you in the good and the right way. David is par excellence, the king after God's own heart, the shepherd who prays for his people and prays in their name. His submission to the will of God, his praise, and his repentance will be a model for the prayer of the people. His prayer, the prayer of God's anointed, is a faithful adherence to the divine promise and expresses a loving and joyful trust in God, the only king and Lord.

In the Psalms, David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the first prophet of Jewish and Christian prayer. The prayer of Christ, the true Messiah and son of David, will reveal and fulfill the meaning of this prayer. The temple of Jerusalem, the house of prayer that David wanted to build, will be the work of his son, Solomon. The prayer at the dedication of the temple relies on God's promise and covenant, on the active presence of his name among his people, recalling his mighty deeds at the Exodus. The king lifts his hands toward heaven and begs the Lord, on his own behalf, on behalf of the entire people, and of the generations yet to come for the forgiveness of their sins and for their

daily needs, so that the nations may know that he is the only God, and that the heart of his people may belong wholly and entirely to him. All right. There we have it, paragraph 25, 74 to 2580. This is so beautiful. I'm telling you guys, this is just, okay, let's go back. Instead of me just gushing, let's go. Here we have Moses.

The reality, of course, that here is the promise begins to be fulfilled. We had the Passover, right, as God sets his people free from slavery in Egypt, as the Exodus, the gift of the law, gratification of the covenant. This is all stuff that God does. does with Moses and goes through Moses. But this is incredible because here in 2575, the initiative is God's. He calls Moses from the burning bush. Moses is just, you know this. Moses is just going about his day. He's run away from his home in Pharaoh's temple, right? He's run away from Egypt. And now he's just living far away. He is a shepherd. He has a family. He's just living his life. And in the

midst of him just living his life, what does God do? God initiates from the midst of the burning bush, he calls Moses, and this is, I love this, this event will remain one of the primordial images of prayer in the spiritual tradition of Jews and Christians alike. What is that? Well, when God appears, when he reveals himself, and what happens? I love the fact that here the church reminds us that this whole, this story is a microcosm of what it is to learn how to pray. As God initiates, Moses realizes that, oh, he's standing on holy ground now. This is the true and living God. This is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And he's calling him to move. He's calling him to be different. He's calling him to do something. This is, again, it's

incredible. It goes on to say, he learns how to pray in this. He balks, right? He hesitates at this. He makes excuses. I can't speak. Who am I? Above all, he questions. And it's in response to his question. Who am I to say, the sent me? When I go to the people of Israel and I tell them that you sent me and they ask, well, who was it who sent you? What name shall I give? And that's when God confides his ineffable name, that Y-H-W-H, the holy name, sacred name, the tetragrammaton, remember we talked about this,

that name that we say now as Yahweh, the holy name of God. And this is so amazing, so beautiful, that it's the process of prayer that helps Moses become a prayer. It's this process, not of just Moses saying, oh, sure, you got it. Moses isn't pretending that.

he's someone else. Moses isn't pretending he understands when he doesn't. Moses isn't pretending that this is okay when it's not okay. He questions. He hesitates. He makes excuses. Does this sound like anyone we know? It probably sounds a lot like us. As long as our prayer is honest, and that's one of the things that Moses teaches us about prayer. Our prayer has to be honest. And so because Moses' his prayer is honest. Because Moses responds to God's initiative, paragraph 2576 says, therefore, or thus, the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. And this is, again, this is the beginning of contemplative prayer, where you just simply reflect on, you contemplate the goodness of God, on his being, on himself, on his presence, on his person.

And that's the life of contemplative prayer that you're called to. You and I both were called to this. But also, we recognize that because Moses has been honest, that's why he can do this. And let's just highlight this for a bit because it is worth it. Right now, I don't know if I, I don't know if I mentioned this. Maybe I mentioned this talking to Sister Merriam, but I had wanted to have this last pillar, this pillar for number four every day of the catechism, like at least one paragraph for every day of the cate. And it turns out there's not 365 paragraphs in this last pillar.

And also, if it kind of sort of could have worked out, it wasn't going to work out really well or cleanly. And so we decided not to do it. so we have to save this whole section on prayer to the end, which is the wisest way to go. But I wanted to talk about prayer the whole time. Why? Because we can talk about God. And that's good. We need to learn about God. But we have to talk to God. We have to talk with God. That if you and I are listening to His Word, that's awesome. If we're learning about the church's teaching, that is incredible. It's so good. But unless we are actually

in conversation, in relationship with this God, on regular prayer, then it's kind of like, well, what's the point? Because we recognize that the point of everything, the point of God revealing himself, and here we are declaring the creed, the point of the ability to worship God in the sacraments, the point of being able to walk like God and live like God in this earth is to be in relation, is to be able to be in relationship with him. And so here we are, talking about prayer. And one of the big aspects, remember yesterday I think it was we talked about how

humility is the foundation of prayer. Humility is nothing more than honesty. I always say this. Humility is very little more or nothing more than honesty. Being honest. And the question we get to ask is when you and I are in prayer, are we honest? And fully honest, right? The first move of honesty is, you are God and I'm not. The first move of humility, first move of honesty is okay, I'm approaching God as if God is actually God and you are, who you are, what you are is made in God's image. So you're good. You are also broken, just like me. And so we have this goodness, this brokenness. We have our plans, and that's who I'm approaching God with. I have my own desires. That's how we approach God. But also we realize that God's will is better for us than

our own will is. And so we have to have this willingness to be taught, this willingness to be led in prayer. But also, go back to Moses, a willingness to engage, right? A willingness when God says, hey, here's the new plan. You're going back to Pharaoh and you're going back to the homeland where you ran away from because they were going to probably kill you because you murdered a person. And maybe we'd say, I don't want to go there. And so we're going to hesitate. We're going to try to negotiate, try to make excuses. We're going to question. We're going to do that as long as you're taking God seriously. This is just the reality. If I'm taking God's call seriously, then we know this is true. We don't. We don't. We know this is true. We don't.

don't always want what God wants. Moses is taking God's call seriously, and so he is taking God seriously, and so he is honest. And God speaks to him face to face clearly, and not in riddles. And it goes on to say in paragraph 2577, from this intimacy, the faithful God who's slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love, Moses drew strength and determination for his intercession. From this intimacy, from that he was able to be honest with the Lord, and God kept drawing him closer and closer. Moses kept going, getting closer and closer. Because of that intimacy, he drew strength and determination for his intercession. He doesn't pray for himself. He prays for the people that God made his own. And it's just so, so incredible. And I love this because

now Moses knows something about who God is. It inspires him into boldness in this great intercession among the Jewish people and in the church. Okay, God, I know this about you. If you are love, you are therefore righteous and faithful. If you are love and you're true, you will not contradict yourself. You cannot contradict yourself. God, if you are love, then you must remember your marvelous deeds. And God, if you are love and you are good, your glory is at stake. You cannot forsake the people that bear your name. And that's so just this odd, this incredible thing. When you and I know who God is, we can approach him with honesty, but this is also so vitally important. we get to approach God as he is knowing that if I find myself in a place of suffering or myself

in a place of tragedy, if I found myself in a place where I do not want to be, I realize when I'm talking to God, I'm not talking to a God who's indifferent. I'm not talking to a God who doesn't care about my pain. I'm not talking to a God who says, oh, you know what, time of trouble, well, just, you know, rub some dirt on it, get back in the game. We're talking to a God who is love, the God who is love, the God who not only is love, he, loves you and so we can be honest with him and we can you know we can hesitate we can negotiate we can question but at the same time in all of this we don't question who he is because he's already revealed himself we know you are the god who is good who is love who is faithful so now when i'm

talking to you i'm talking to one that i know i can trust because you're good and because you're love and because you are faithful. And this is summarized in so many ways. Yes, Moses is life, but also in the life of David and the prayer of the king. When we read the Psalms, right, David wrote a bunch of the Psalms. David, in writing the Psalms, reveals prayers. And these are, so the Psalms are prayers. The Psalms are prayers. And those Psalms are prayers not of a man who had all the answers, not of a man who had a cushy life, right? Or a peaceful life, or a life free from pain or a life free from sorrow or a life free from sin. They're the prayers of someone who, yes, had some big deal sins,

had some big deal concerns, had some massive tragedy in his life, a man who had some massive suffering and loss and sorrow and battle in his life. But there are also the prayers of a man who in the midst of that tragedy, in the midst of his own sin, in the midst of evil people trying to do evil things to him, he knew that he could trust in God. you know this that in almost almost every one of the psalms even in the ones that there's so much trouble there is so much suffering happening there's so much many rail against me that kind of idea

at one point in every almost almost every one of the psalms he says yet i will trust or yet i praise your name or now i still cry out to you in the one psalm that i can think of psalm 88 where that doesn't happen. It's, I believe it's a prefigurement. I believe it's a prefigurement of the prayer of Jesus as he was being held in Caiaphas's house overnight on Holy Thursday. Where it ends with the haunting line, my one companion is darkness. And I believe that the reason why this is the only Psalm that I can think of at least, where there's so much darkness, but not a declaration of hope at the end is because it was a prefigurement again of the depth to which Jesus was willing or would be willing to enter into brokenness and darkness and even willing to dive deeply into the hopelessness

that you and I experience. The kind of hopelessness that's summarized in Jesus' words from the cross, my God, my God, why have forsaken me? Not because God has forsaken him, because he knew what it felt like. We know what it feels like. And so here's David, who can pray because he's honest and because he knows who God is. And so he teaches us how to pray too in the Psalms. He says in 2579, in the Psalms, David inspired by the Holy Spirit is the first prophet of Jewish and Christian prayer. The prayer of Christ, the true Messiah and son of David will reveal and fulfill the meaning of this prayer. And it's so incredible. And we prayed this every day. We prayed the Psalms. every single day, and we recognize that God is present in our midst. We pray, this last line of 2580,

we pray so that the nations may know that he is the only God, and that the heart of his people may belong wholly and entirely to him. That is our prayer, because we intercede too, right? Remember, just like Moses, the intercessor, prayer of the mediator, David, prayer of the king, who trusts in the midst of difficulty and darkness, we also, because of Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, ability to trust, to pray, to live in the exact same way. So we do. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. Cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.