What Psaki and Frey Don’t Understand About Prayer

Another couple of leftists just revealed they understand nothing about Christianity.

“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, said Wednesday when addressing the horrific shooting at Annunciation Church. “These kids were literally praying.”

That same day, Jen Psaki, former press secretary for President Joe Biden, posted on X, “Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

“Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers [sic] does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back,” added Psaki, who now hosts her own show on MSNBC.

Talk about missing the point.

Yes, those kids—and their teachers, and some of their parents, and some 80-somethings—were all gathered in a church when bullets pierced through the stained glass windows, a Catholic Mass just having started.

And no, sadly, a miracle did not happen that saved everyone’s life. Two children are dead, their lives lost because of a horrifically evil action. Another 18 people, including 15 children, were injured.

But that doesn’t mean prayer is useless—and that’s something one of the grieving families understands. According to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., one of the families who lost a child was present at a Catholic prayer vigil held Wednesday night.

“Watching that mom and dad with the little sister there is something I will never forget,” she told the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Can Frey and Psaki ever comprehend that family’s actions—their choice to pray on likely the darkest day of their lives?

On Facebook Wednesday, Annunciation School shared a message written by the school’s principal, Matthew DeBoer, and the church’s pastor, Fr. Dennis Zehren, stating, “Please lift up these families and these children in prayer and surround them and each other with your love during this difficult time. ”

Attached to the image was a photo of lit candles, with this quote, “To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.”

These lines come from a Catholic prayer, the Hail, Holy Queen. The prayer, directed to the mother of God, is said at the end of the rosary, a popular Catholic devotion, and also sometimes on its own.

As a child, I remember being struck often by those lines as my family prayed a daily rosary. I was uneasy about the idea of the world being a “valley of tears.” I knew—and understood, after my great aunt died when I was five—the ideas of “mourning and weeping.” But I was both jarred and comforted by the prayer’s easy acceptance of life’s sorrows.

I did not then—or now—want to live in a “valley of tears.”

Christianity is full of such sentiments. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” Jesus preached during the Sermon on the Mount. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,” the psalmist pledges.

But it is also a faith that promises that while now, that this time on earth, is full of sorrows, there is another time coming.

“’He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.’” (Revelations 21:4)

Such words can be cold comfort in the starkness of tremendous sorrow. Like many Christians, I have seen sorrows I cannot understand—such as the unexpected death of a friend in her 30s who left behind two young children and her husband.

Yet those are the moments I find myself turning most to prayer. Not because I believe that God will necessarily provide a miracle (although I always pray for one). But because I trust that God is close to the brokenhearted, because I have faith, even as I do not understand, that He loves the dead and their beloved more than I ever will—or could.  

What happened on Wednesday was unbelievably evil. Yet in that church, people who had just been praying also did extraordinary things.

“Our teachers were heroes,” DeBoer said. “Children were ducked down. Adults were protecting children. Older children were protecting younger children, and … it could have been significantly worse without their heroic action.”

Weston Halsne, a fifth grade student, told WCCO, a Minnesota CBS affiliate, that a friend, presumably another child, had intervened to protect him.

Halsne said he was close to the windows. “It was like, shots fired, and then we kind of like got under pews. They shot through the stained glass windows, I think, and it was really scary,” said the 10-year-old, who believed he felt gunpowder on his neck.

“My friend Victor like saved me though. Because he laid on top of me. But he got hit,” the boy added.

“I was super scared for him. But I think now he’s OK.”

What is his message to his friend Victor? “I hope you’re OK and I’m praying for you.”

None of this means that actions shouldn’t be taken to help prevent another shooting.

“There’s an African proverb that says, ‘When you pray, move your feet.’ So I beg you, I ask you, to please pray, but don’t stop with your words. Let’s make a difference and support this community, these children, these families, these teachers. Never again can we let this happen,” said the school principal.

The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan reported that a Catholic school leader and a private school leader had asked Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, back in 2023 to help secure nonpublic schools.

“We need to ensure that all [our] schools have the resources to respond to and prevent these attacks from happening to our schools,” wrote Tim Benz, the president of MINNDEPENDENT, and Jason Adkins, the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference.

No funding ever materialized for private schools’ safety, according to Adkins, who added, “I would note that Minnesota had an $18 billion dollar [sic] budget surplus in the 2023-24 session, and this was not funded.”

We are also still learning details about the shooter, but it appears probable that mental illness—which we continue to poorly treat in the U.S.—may well have been a factor.

But prayer is perfectly compatible with action. It’s an absurdly false dichotomy to say it must be one or the other. (And perhaps, in the spirit of charity, Psaki and Frey intended to convey a sentiment more along the lines of the African proverb than a criticism of prayer.)

“We pray because our hearts are broken. We pray because we know God listens. We pray because we know that God works in mysterious ways and can inspire us to further action. Why do you feel the need to attack other people for praying when kids were just killed praying?” Vice President JD Vance posted in response to Psaki’s X post.

Why, indeed?

That is a question Psaki and Frey, and the leftists who applauded them, would do well to contemplate. Because when they criticize prayer as a response to tremendous evil, to unimaginable suffering, they’re not making some brilliant point. They’re just showing that they’ve reduced Christianity to some kind of parody “prosperity gospel” theological claptrap. They’ve just shown that they cannot comprehend a religion that includes the resurrection and the crucifixion.

Fortunately, they are not representative of most Americans, many of whom value prayer. Two thirds of Americans pray daily or at least a few times a month, according to the Pew Research Center.

In Minneapolis, members of various faith communities prayed for the Annunciation School community, according to the local Catholic bishop.

“I was very moved to see how many churches were having prayer services this evening, how many of our Protestant brothers and sisters,” Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda told attendees of the prayer vigil, reported Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I received messages today from the Jewish community, from the Muslim community. I know there are representatives from both of those groups who are here.”

That’s America, not leftists ranting about prayer.

And thank God for that.

The post What Psaki and Frey Don’t Understand About Prayer appeared first on The Daily Signal.