Prayer Ministry

Intercessory Prayer Ministry

We are a community centered on monastic traditions of corporate contemplative prayer and service. One of our callings is to bear witness before God, in the words of the old prayer book, "for those who are in any ways afflicted or distressed in mind, body or estate".

		To Receive Prayers If you would like certain people, including yourself, or certain concerns remembered before God in prayer, please leave a message at (612)-331-1544 or send an email containing: As much or as little as you feel comfortable sharing about your concern. A period of time for which you'd like prayers to be said If you wish, your contact information so we can stay in touch with you about your concern.

Why Intercessory Prayer? One of our intercessory prayers for loved ones address God as “doing for them things better than we can desire or pray for.” This expresses the mystery of the kind of prayer that asks God to do things. God is Love, and does not need a reminder from us to be loving. So what is the point if intercessory prayer? Three possibilities suggest themelves: 1) Human freedom and Divine economy. God has chosen to rule the household of the cosmos in coöperation with humanity. God waited to see what Adam would call the creatures. Names then were more important than now, expressing as it was thought, the very essence of the thing named, so Adam’s naming the creatures was a participation in their creation. Perhaps in a similar way, God waits to be invited into the world to take action. God will not go anywhere uninvited. Our prayers give God entré into the world, just as Adam’s names gave the creatures their identities. 2) Effect on the intercessor When we remember another before God, we wish her well and bless her. As with any act of charity, remembrance in prayer increases our benevolence toward the recipient. In practical terms, this may result in other acts of kindness. 3) Mystical communion Most physicians have stories to tell about the importance of attitude to recovery. Countless anecdotes tell of the recovery of desperately ill people who have been prayed for. This proves nothing, and any attempt to reduce this mystery to a scientific fact is misguided, reducing prayer to a kind of sorcery. Nevertheless, it may be that there are unknown means of communication and spiritual power. If we are all one Body, as we say, could it be that the spiritual disposition of the whole Body, represented by the community’s intercessions, is a factor in the well-being of its members as persons? Who knows? At least we can say that God has commanded us to pray – for ourselves and for each other – and that those who do have found it meaningful over the centuries, as an expression of what we call the Communion of Saints in which we live now, unbounded by time, unaffected by death, unto ages of ages.