The Role Of Our Emotions In Prayer

I have always been wary of lessons taught as though emotions are never important when it comes to prayer. Maybe you have heard them, too. The ones that say we shouldn’t care about how we feel as long as we have the will to please the Lord.

While I can understand the motive of such thoughts, there is something within me that doesn’t quite agree.

It is true that we shouldn’t give in to fleeting emotions. So many relationships have been ruined because the people involved no longer felt “happy” with each other.

And it is true that we should persist even in times when we experience dryness in prayer.

But we go too far when we make an absolute statement that emotions are unnecessary in prayer.

Why must we go to prayer thinking we have no need to bring our emotions along with our sincerity, our thoughts and our will?

Should our emotions be set aside as though they didn’t matter in our relationship with God?

We always talk about being joyful in the Lord! Does that mean that our joy should never include our emotions?

If we continue to disregard our emotions, perhaps we are also not giving due appreciation for the humanity that God has bestowed upon us.

He did not create us as robots that simply obey without gratitude, love and delight. He never intended our worship to be bland, mechanical and dry.

If we make prayer life to be like this, it is no wonder that so many people abhor religion and consider it as an instrument of slavery that sucks all life away.

Our joy should be deeper, far deeper than feelings that could easily change. But that doesn’t mean we should be the kind of people that leave our every emotion behind.

Have we ever seen Jesus without having His human emotions? Did we not see Him weep when His friend Lazarus died?

Jesus laughs and weeps and gets angry. He is more human than any other person who has ever lived! Yet He is also God, and His Divinity was never diminished by having these human emotions.

Among the recent saints, we have Padre Pio who sheds a flood of tears during the mass, allowing his emotions to show his deep sorrow for the great sacrifice and love of our Savior during His crucifixion.

Here is an excerpt from the book “The True Face of Padre Pio”:

“The Capuchin’s face which a few moments before had seemed to me jovial and affable was literally transfigured… Fear, joy, sorrow, agony or grief …
Suddenly great tears welled from his eyes, and his shoulders, shaken with sobs… Between himself and Christ there was no distance…”

Our emotions should not control our will. But our will can be united with our emotions as every part of us becomes one in praying to God!

When I come to God in prayer, I want to pray with my whole being, offering up not only my will and my thoughts but also my many emotions as a human being. There before Him, I cry and surrender my pain. There, I release my anger for all the evil and injustice that I see in the world. And there, I proclaim my joy and praise for Him, the One who delights in me, who weeps with me and who loves me with all of His heart.

“The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
a mighty savior,
Who will rejoice over you with gladness,
and renew you in his love,
Who will sing joyfully because of you…”
–Zephaniah 3:17

Jocelyn Soriano is the author of To Love an Invisible God. “Is it really possible to love a God we cannot even see?”