How Does God Answer Prayer?

Instead, we should think of it like this: God is good, beautiful and true and it his nature to pour his graces into the world at all times. His goodness, truth and beauty radiates in and through his creation as the sunlight radiates into the world bring light and life to all things. This radiation of goodness, truth and beauty is never ending, all present and all powerful.

Prayer is the means by which we join our will with His will. If you like we become the channels and directors of that goodness, truth and beauty in the world.

Through prayer we co-operate with God to focus his goodness, truth and beauty on the specifics for which we pray.

Consequently, the man’s prayer for his son at the ballgame could be, “Lord, help Jimmy to do a great job at the ball game and give them the victory.”

However, within that specific prayer should be a greater prayer for God’s goodness, truth and beauty to bless Jimmy and for him to be protected and drawn more closely and firmly into God’s everlasting goodness, truth and beauty.

Let’s say that Jimmy doesn’t do very well at the ball game and his team loses. With the right kind of prayer Jimmy is brought closer to God’s goodness, truth and beauty through the lessons learned through failure and defeat–maybe even in a better way than if he had had great success.

Does God answer particular prayers?

I believe he does, but not in the fashion that we in our limited understandings would imagine.

The particular prayers: for good weather or for success in a fund raising campaign or for protection from evil–are answered by God’s overwhelming power, but that power is opened up to the particular situation through our action of prayer and faith.

We’ve all experimented with a magnifying glass to make a fire. The magnifying glass harnesses and focusses the existing sunlight for a particular purpose: to light a fire. I believe prayer works like that magnifying glass: it concentrates, focusses and magnifies God’s great power for a particular application.

That works: Then I remember that in the Magnificat the Blessed Mother sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord…” and I wonder if this other deeper meaning is part of the mystery of her who’s whole life was a prayer.