When is Prayer Effective?

by Fr. Martin Mary Fonte, FI

A mother of three kids came to me and asked desperately as to why God does not answer her prayers. I asked her what is she praying for. For the conversion of my son, she said. I told her to have trust in God for he answers our prayer. And she said that she has been praying for him for five years and God is not answering her prayer. I told her about St. Monica who, because of her prayers her son St. Augustine converted. She asked as to how many years she prayed for him. Almost twenty years, I said. Then she exclaimed: Father I don’t have those long years to live.

When is our prayer effective? First a catechetical note on prayer. Prayer is not just prayer of petition. There is a prayer of adoration; there is a prayer of thanksgiving; there is a prayer of reparation and of course, a prayer of petition. The differences lie in the purpose of our prayer. We restrict our reflection on prayer of petition.

The liturgy today invites us to reflect on this act of religion called prayer. Abraham begged the Lord to spare from destruction the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. The citizens of that city were given in to perverse sinful acts such as sodomy, homosexuality and unnatural forms of sins. God in listening to Abraham’s prayer intend to spare the city on condition that he will find at least ten righteous people. The story concluded in the destruction of the city. Incidentally, righteous people in Sodom did not even reach to ten. Only the family of Lot was spared.

The Gospel today expresses three themes on prayer: one is the Lord’s Prayer that Christ taught the disciples; second is the necessity of perseverance in prayer, and thirdly, the attitude one should have in prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer, according to St. Augustine is the most perfect formula of prayer. Primarily because it came from our Lord himself. Besides, it summarizes in a more exhaustive way everything that one can ever ask for. The seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer is so logically arranged that the first three focus on petitions pertaining to God and the rest to ourselves.

The story of the persistent friend who came in the middle of the night to ask his friend for bread is a lesson of perseverance in prayer. God does not ask us to keep on repeating our prayers because of his stubbornness; he only wants us to be convinced that what we really ask for is dispensable to us.

But the last part of the Gospel is the most interesting: “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” On a superficial reading, one might conclude that such statement is absolute, that is, God will absolutely give whatever we ask from him. Experience tells us the contrary. Not everything we ask is given us like the poor mother who came to me. What are the reasons? More precisely, when do we know that God will answer our prayers? The answer is, we don’t know absolutely, but we do know, conditionally.

What are the conditions of effective prayer?

1The subject of prayer. The person praying to God is given into account. St. Therese of the Little Flower once was praying to God to let snow fall on the day of her religious profession. She wants the earth filled with white as sign of purity. It was the beginning of summer. At her profession day, snow came. The lesson is, the more generous a person is to God, the more likely his prayer will be heard. God will never be outdone by the person’s generosity. This is the basis why we ask the prayer and intercession of the saints. They have a special hearing to God because during their lifetime, they never refused God anything.

2The content of prayer. What we ask for also matters a lot. God can not certainly grant anything that He knows will be harmful to our salvation and to others. Anything material or physical petitions that God sees will lead us to evil remotely will never be given. God can never contradict His divine goodness who only wishes the best for His creatures.

3The attitude of prayer. God wants us to approach him with unconditional trust and confidence. This is certainly an attitude of one who had been adopted by supernatural affiliation. Christ who teaches us to call God as “Our Father” wants us to realize that we must approach Him with such confidence. After all, we have been adopted by the merits of His own Son. This is what St. Paul is convinced of in the second reading today. He said that “you were baptized and been buried with Christ...” This confidence must pervade in all our prayers to make them acceptable to God. But the “Lord’s Prayer” adds another attitude we should have, that is the docility to do only God’s will. There must be a disposition of surrender to His divine will. In prayer, one should not act as dictator to God. It is necessary to act as a beggar who is always dispose to receive whatever God wishes to give or not to give. Prayer reveals man’s creatureliness in the presence of His Creator.

+ May the Lord give you His peace.

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