Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21:22

My wife and I were living in Long Beach, California, in the early seventies and I had just gotten a job in the San Francisco Bay area. I was driving my little Volkswagen (we called her Twinkie Wilma) up Highway 5, all alone, when it broke down in a desolate and empty expanse of concrete, an isolated and bleak stretch of the freeway. As well as I knew, the nearest gas station or town was more than fifty miles away. My prospects of securing help seemed bleak. I tinkered with the car valiantly, but nothing I tried could get it going again. I finally gave up.

I had been sitting by the side of the road for about an hour, feeling very helpless and forlorn, when I looked at my watch and noted that it was 6:15 a.m. Nervously, I wondered if I would get to San Jose in time for my first day of work, 8 A.M. the next morning.

Suddenly, without thinking about it, I automatically reached for the keys and tried to start the engine again. I don’t know what prompted me to do that; some inner urge which I could not explain just compelled me to make another attempt. To my stunned surprise, the engine sprang to life as if nothing had ever been wrong with it. What a shock! I got my stuff together, shifted the car into gear and drove the rest of the way without mishap.

That night, I called my wife Kathie to tell her that I had arrived safely in San Jose and that everything was OK.

“Oh,” she said, “I wasn’t worried. The kids and I prayed for you at dinner tonight. We did a special prayer for Twinkie Wilma.”

“Do you know what time that was?” I asked.

“Absolutely. I was watching the clock on the stove so dinner wouldn’t burn.”

“So, what time was it?”

“Six-fifteen exactly.”

Brad Fregger

Comment:
Jesus tells us that “whatever you ask the Father in my name He will give you” (John 15:17). Prayer works when they are not selfish, but God-centered. The family in today’s story so believed in the power of prayer that they were not anxious or fearful for the safety of Brad, the father of the family. Their prayers were effective at the time Brad’s car gave out on the highway.

Fr. Hugh Duffy