PaddlingPadre

What is it that we are doing when we pray? The obvious answer to that question is that we are, as we see in so many places even within this liturgy, such as in the collect and preparatory prayers and in the general intercessions, that we are asking God for things. And, certainly, we are. And yet there is in this admission something that is a bit uncomfortable, perhaps, something that doesn’t quite sit well with our modern, and therefore rationalistic, tendencies.

This scandalousness, if that is not too strong a word for it, is on full display in our first reading, where Abraham, in an episode that seems almost ridiculous, negotiates with God, attempting to talk him down, step by step, from his planned destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Indeed, Abraham almost sounds like he is haggling with God the way one might haggle with a vendor at a street market. Hence the scandal, both that one should speak to the God of the Universe in a such a manner, and that God, the impassible, the immovable, the omniscient, should be seemingly moved by such beggary.

There is a sense in which prayer, to put this problem concisely, can seem to us to be senseless, and for a few connected reasons. First, as scripture itself makes clear, our heavenly Father already knows all of our needs, he already knows all of our desires, and he knows what it is that we ask before we ask it. And so, the question naturally arises: what is the point in asking? Relatedly, God is, as we have already pointed out, impassible, immovable. For I the Lord do not change, as the prophet Malachi says. And so, if God does not change, do we suppose that by our prayers we will change his mind? Indeed, if God’s mind were changeable, he would not truly be God. And if all this is true, if God knows already what we shall ask and if his mind is always already made up, does he want us to pray to him for merely egoistical reasons? Does he enjoy our groveling? Such are the questions that an overly rational skeptic might ask.

In answer, it is true enough that God knows our prayers before we pray them, and it is equally true that our prayers do not change God’s mind. Nevertheless, prayer is not for that reason fruitless or pointless. In the first place, even if prayer does not have an effect on God, it certainly has an effect on us. Thus, by praying, by asking God for the things that we need, we are in the asking reminded of the necessity of having recourse to God’s help in these things, since the things for which we ask when we pray are, all other questions aside, truly given to us by God.

And then there is the fact too, that God very often wills that certain things come about in response to prayers, such that those prayers, by God’s unchanging will, do indeed play a sort of causal role in bringing about an effect. So it is with the prayer of Abraham, for it was according to the working of divine providence that God should promise, in response to Abraham’s entreaty, to spare Sodom if he should find there but ten righteous souls.

And in fact, what we see here is but an instance of a pattern that one finds all throughout God’s workings, that one finds in every corner of Catholic theology: namely, that God wills us to have a participatory role in his work, that we be coworkers with him. For God could, indeed, do everything by himself, yet he has not willed to do so. He is not jealous in that sense. Rather, it is more to his glory that that the saints and the Virgin, that the angels and ordinary Christians like you and I, should, by God’s grace, play a real role in the economy of salvation, such as when we share the faith, when we celebrate the sacraments and worship together, and not least of all when we pray, for God has willed that many of his great works should be done in response to our prayers.

And yet perhaps above all, without diminishing the importance of anything that has been said, we pray because we are transformed in the asking. Not only are we reminded of the necessity of depending upon God for the things for which we pray, but prayer also puts us into conversation with, into communion with, the one who is himself our very life. Hence Chrysostom says, “Think what happiness is granted you, what honor bestowed on you, when you converse with God in prayer, when you talk with Christ, when you ask what you will, whatever you desire.” Prayer is in this way an essential ingredient when it comes to growing in holiness, and it is doubtless in view of this change which is worked in us that God deigns at times to act only after we have prayed, since, as St. Gregory says, “By asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give us.”

And so, contrary to any skeptical musings, we can confidently say that prayer is an indispensable thing for the Christian, truly an indispensable thing for any human being, and, indeed, woe to the one who does not pray! For it is in praying that we are conformed to the end for which we were made, it is in praying that we come to rely more fully and more consciously on God for those things which only God can give, and it is by prayer that we come to play an active role in God’s plan and become worthy to receive that for which we pray.

For as Our Lord says, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. We have only to ask as we ought, to pray as he has taught us, and, truly, none of our prayers will go unanswered.