"We Are Never Quite Alone"

More from Mark Shea on prayer--I hope he makes this into a book someday!

...When we open ourselves to the life and power of God in Jesus Christ, we automatically open ourselves to the mystery of Christ in His people. For Christians -- all Christians -- are part of the Body of Christ and are inseparably knit to His glory and His work in heaven and earth.

This means, very simply, that there is no such thing as solitary prayer, just as there is no such thing in nature as a living, solitary human cell. Whether we realize it or not (and whether we like it or not), wherever and whenever we pray -- whether in a prayer group, or at church with a thousand people, or alone in our prayer closet -- we are solidly fixed in the vast reality of the Body of Christ spread out through time and eternity, flung across the face of the world, terrible as an army with banners.

Thus we not only have recourse to Jesus as He is expressed in the local gathering of His people (our particular church or prayer group); we also have access to the entire treasury of riches that are in His saints, both living and dead (Eph 1:18-19). This "communion of saints" stems from the fact that there is but one body and, as Jesus said, all are alive to God (Lk 20:38). Grafted into the life and power of the Risen Christ and sharing perfectly in that glory, the church in heaven is part of a swelling symphony of prayer and praise that will culminate one day in the crescendo of the Second Coming. The Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us of this fact when it states that we are "surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses," that we have come "to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn . . . to the spirits of righteous men and women made perfect." Whenever and wherever we pray, we stand in this vast landscape of joy and power...

And, as the Muppets observed: