The Power of Prayer

(The Story Behind the Confraternity of Warriors-in-Christ)

“Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.  To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.” (Ephesians 6:18)

On April 23, 2017, a beautiful little eight-year old girl lay dying in a hospital intensive care unit room in Colorado.

She was our granddaughter.

Earlier that day, she told her mother she wasn’t feeling well.  Thinking this might be the onset of the flu, but not sure, her Mother took her to a nearby Urgent Care facility.  After a few tests, Mother and daughter were in an ambulance, racing to a nearby hospital.

At the hospital, our granddaughter was found to be infected with a fast-acting and deadly bacterium that was ravaging her young body. The origin and type of infection were unknown. Before long, her organs began shutting down. She was dying.

The first news of this came to us when our son called about 5:00 PM that night.  He had been at the Denver airport just ready to board a plane for a week-long business trip to Tokyo when he got the call that his little girl was in serious trouble.

Our son told us when he got to the hospital our granddaughter was hooked up to various monitors and tubes, with machines and people all around her. At one point, there were nine different doctors and various medical staff in the room, all working to save her. Crying, our son told us the doctors said they didn’t know if our granddaughter was going to make it.  The next 24 hours were going to be critical in answering that terrible unknown.

We told our son we would jump in the car and come right away, but he talked us out of that.  He had enough to worry about without thinking about us driving in the dark all night to get there.

When we got off the phone, we prayed the Rosary together for our granddaughter’s recovery.  After a short and sleepless night, we prayed the Rosary again early the next morning.

That night, the same day we prayed our second Rosary, our granddaughter walked out of the hospital with her Mom and Dad, all signs of the infection gone. In the short span of 48 hours she had traveled from perfect health, to the brink of death, with her organs shutting down, and then leaving the hospital completely recovered. The deadly bacterium had disappeared as rapidly as it had appeared.

Although the doctors had no real explanation for what caused the infection, or why it suddenly responded to the various antibiotics they had been trying, we are certain God heard and answered the many prayers offered for our granddaughter’s recovery.

We belong to the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary, a world-wide prayer group whose members pray for each other, and for each members’ intentions, every time they pray the Rosary. Created in the 16^th century by a group of Dominican Friars, this group has thousands of members around the world and the members all promise to pray for each other; both in this life – and in the next life as well.

When we prayed for our granddaughter’s recovery, our prayers were effectively joined by the countless hundreds of thousands of this group’s members, including that Heavenly Host that had already entered into the next life.

After celebrating and thanking our wonderful and Almighty God for our granddaughter’s full recovery, we started thinking about the miraculous potential in intercessory prayer (praying for others) and thought how good it would be if more people realized how powerful it really can be. With this in mind, we wondered if we could (or should) start some type of intercessory prayer group.

We soon found out that talking about doing something, and then actually doing it, are two very different things. Every time the idea came up, it would get smothered with negative thoughts.

Who were we to think we could start a prayer group like this?

Who can we invite to join?  Why would they want to?

Do we need a website? A Facebook page?

Do we advertise? How do we pay for it?

If we start this and it ends up failing, will we look stupid?

This kind of thing is for priests or nuns to do, not us.

These mind debates occurred off and on until the summer of 2019 when we happened to be at a Catholic conference in Omaha.  About 12,000 people attended this event and the very last speaker at the conference ended his talk with this challenge.

“I want you to think of the one thing that Jesus has been calling you to do; and then I want you to go out and do it.”

That was it.  It couldn’t get much clearer than that. No more excuses.  The next day, Sunday, June 9, 2019, Tim started working on a website for this prayer group, which would ultimately come to be called the Confraternity of Warriors-in-Christ (https://warriors-in-christ.com)

Although we are Catholics, we wanted the Confraternity of Warriors-in-Christ organization to be open to all Christians and we made the rules as simple and inviting as possible.

You need only to be a Christian who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who willingly died for us so that we might have eternal life. You also promise to try and say a prayer each day for all other members, and for those members’ intentions.  This obligation continues for the entirety of each member’s life, both in this earthly one and in the Heavenly one to follow.

That’s it.  No cost, no email address, and no personal information required, except for a name and country where a member lives.  And prayers, of course. Lots and lots of prayers.

With a plea to the Holy Spirit, and a special blessing from our local pastor, the Confraternity of Warriors-in-Christ website went public on August 15, 2019, the Marian Feast Day of The Assumption.  We dutifully said a prayer that day for all of the Confraternity members, which then consisted of just us two.

After the website went public, we had no idea what to expect next.  We left it up to the Holy Spirit to decide if He wanted more members. As it turned out, He did want more – quite a few, in fact.

By Good Friday, April 10, 2020, less than eight months after launching the Confraternity of Warriors-in-Christ website, over 1,000,000 “warriors” in 128 countries throughout the world had promised to pray for each other every day. More warriors have been added almost every day since then.

As we discovered by the wonderful recovery of our granddaughter, the power of intercessory prayer can be incredible.

We encourage others to join the Confraternity of Warriors-in-Christ and we welcome others to share their stories of how God has answered their prayers as well. You can click the link at the beginning of this page or on the “Share Your Story” sidebar link to submit your story.

May God continue to bless his earthly children with His bountiful graces and to look with special favor upon all members of the Confraternity of Warriors-in-Christ.

Connie and Tim Cumberland – Columbus, Nebraska USA