What do we understand the purpose of prayer to be, and how do we understand prayer to work? We pray for a sign to help us make a decision, for the knowledge of something we need answers to, or do a novena to have something revealed to us, but do we stop to think about the way prayer really works?
“The misconception arises partly from the false idea of prayer that we learn as children, partly from the idiom of piety that looks more to the extraordinary than to the ordinary ways of grace, and partly from our quite understandable tendency to judge the mind of God by what we know of our own.
First, what are we told about prayer? We are given to understand that it will get us out of every difficulty. From our earliest infancy, the belief is drummed into us that if we repeat our petitions enough, we shall get what we want. Faith and perseverance: armed with these two we cannot miss. Now, all this is perfectly true, but not in the sense that we normally understand it. Prayer does get us out of every difficulty – by so building up our inner reserves that we meet every difficulty and rise above it. If we repeat our petitions often enough, we do get what we want – because we come to want God’s will even more than we want an answer to the particular petition we are making. Given faith and perseverance, we cannot miss – since in proportion as these qualities deepen, we get closer to our true goal, which is God.
Sometimes, it is true, the more obvious meaning of the doctrine is verified. We pray, and the obstacle vanishes. We place complete confidence in the power of God to work a miracle, and the miracle (to everyone’s surprise, including our own) happens. We make up our minds never to give up asking, come what may, and after a while, we are rewarded with exactly what we have asked for. Instances of this sort are happily common: they strengthen our belief in the power of prayer and provide occasions for showing gratitude to God. The thing to remember is that such examples of cause and effect are not the only ones that prove the value of prayer, and that those which show it less clearly are evidence of greater faith, greater love, greater trust, and generosity.” – Hubert Van Zeller