What we have said about the relationship we formed with our parents as we grew up is similar to our relationship with God, who comes to us as a loving Father. He is capable of guiding us and providing us for our needs in a way far greater than our parents; indeed, he is capable, if he wished, to make us like puppets, and to do everything for us, and to make us do as he thinks is best without any respect to our will. It is out of love that he grants us not only existence, but the world stage in which we find our existence, as a home in which we are free to develop ourselves as we wish, even to the point of rejecting him if we should wish. It is also with such love that he gives to us the ability to talk to him, to ask him for our desires. As infants cry when they have a desire they want met (be it the need for attention, the need for food, the need to be cleaned up, the need for sleep, et. al.), so do we cry up to God. Infants learn quite quickly how to manipulate their parents and to demand more than they need; it takes awhile for parents to learn how they are being manipulated and to put a stop to it — but when they do, they have to let their children cry, to scream if need be, and not give in to their demands. In a similar way, we must understand God’s reaction to our petitions. He will gives us some flexibility, just as our parents did, but he will not respond to all of our cries, just as a good and loving parent will not spoil their children and respond every time their children demands something of them. We must understand this is the foundation not only for how he responds to us, but also, for why he does not always respond to us as we would like.
Sometimes God wants us to develop and to do things for ourselves, even if we should complain, because he knows it is in this way we come to find out who we are and what we can really do. We have been given a world filled with possibilities, where we are free to develop our own unique persons. Yet, we are not entirely alone. He helps us when we truly need it, but he also wants us to realize, at times, when we need it and when we do not. We should never despair. We know he is looking after us and our best needs, whatever they might be. Indeed, there will be times when he will give us what we need, even if we do not ask for it, starting with our very existence.
God in his eternal providence has made room for us in his creation. Although he guides and directs everything which exists, he allows us to act within the realm of causality, to have free will, so that our choices interact with his eternal decisions to create the pattern of history. While some of his choices will depend upon our activities in the world, some of them will also relate to how we relate to him, and how we plead to him our own desires. “Most of the events that go on in the universe are indeed out of our control, but not all. It is like a play in which the scene and the general outline of the story is fixed by the author, but certain minor details are left for the actors to improvise. It may be a mystery why He should have allowed us to cause real events at all; but it is no odder that He should allow us to cause them by praying than by any other method.”[1] Aquinas puts it forward in this way:
It is apparent, then, from the foregoing that the cause of some things that are done by God is prayers and holy desires. But we showed above that divine providence does not exclude other causes; rather, it orders them so that the order which providence has determined within itself may be imposed on things. And thus, secondary causes are not incompatible with providence; instead, they carry out the effect of providence. In this way, then, prayers are efficacious before God, yet they do not destroy the immutable order of divine providence, because this individual request that is granted to a certain petitioner falls under the order of divine providence.[2]
What St Thomas Aquinas is telling us here is in accord with our discussion on the relationship between God’s eternal providence and his actions as they appear in time. For God, there is one eternal now; his providence, which establishes and sustains the world, does so in relation to his knowledge of our actions and prayers. He directs and acts according to what he knows we do and ask, according to the time and place of our actions and petitions. In this way, we can understand why God’s will can appear to change in time, and why Scripture, for example, describes God as “repenting” of actions — it is because he waited for someone to freely ask him, in the right way, to do something, such as to forgive those who have sinned, so that his acts of punishment turns to acts of mercy.[3] This is how Origen addressed the question before us, of why prayer appears to change God’s action towards us, while God is said in his eternal existence to be unchanging. “If, therefore, our individual freedom is known to Him and consequently foreseen by Him, then what is reasonable in accordance with each person’s merit is ordered from providence, as it what he prays and what character a certain man has who believes this way. And what He wills him to have is decided beforehand.”[4] Prayer does not change God, but it does change our experience of God, of our reception of the gifts God offers to us, and through such reception, it changes ourselves.
Of course, this is not easy for us. Prayers are changing us, helping us to mature, to develop our relationship with God. But as we are children of the most high, we start out as infants, trying to make our way into the world. Our prayer is often like the murmuring of infants, sometimes using real words, sometimes not. We must understand that the difficulty we have should not discourage us and stop us from praying. St John Climacus says we must keep trying just as an infant keeps trying to walk, until at last we finally find ourselves in a pure heart-felt conversation with God. “Until we have acquired true prayer, we are like those who introduce children to walking. Make the effort to raise up, or rather, to enclose your mind within the words of your prayer; and, if like a child, it gets tired and falters, raise it up again.”[5] We should rely upon God, and his good, loving desire for what is best for us.
To try to pray, when it is difficult to do so, when we do not know why we are doing it, is in itself an important part of our spiritual development, because it is what allows us to slowly try and learn how it is to communicate with God, and it shows our heart is open to him and his response. It means that we trust in him (however weak our trust might be). This is true, not just when we pray for ourselves, but also when we pray for others; indeed, praying for others, and asking for their needs instead of our own helps move us outside of ourselves much quicker, because we are no longer self-absorbed in our own petty interests. As such, these kinds of prayers will help us learn what it truly means to pray, for we will allow ourselves to be taken out of our selfish desires, desires which hinder us from talking to and listening to God. When someone asks for us to pray for them, they give us a means by which we can break out of our self-enclosed will with its small vision of reality. Thus, St John Climacus says, “Do not refuse a request to pray for the soul of another, even when you yourself lack the gift of prayer. For often the very faith of the person making the request will evoke the saving contrition of the one who is to offer the prayer.”[6]
This is exactly what it means to be a Christian: to be opened up by grace so as to be ready to receive God himself. “To be Christian is to be open to God’s gesture toward us, which introduces us into the very interior of his life.”[7] Thus, a life of prayer, a life of conversation with God, and an openness to God’s response to our words, is our universal vocation as Christians. The foundation of our spiritual life can be seen in petitions we give to God, in the same way as the foundation of our relationship with our parents comes from the cries of desire we give to them as babies trying to make their way in the world. As children cry out to their parents in faith, hope and love, so should we cry out to God in faith, hope and love.[8]
By praying, we come to realize our standing in the world, where we cannot do all things ourselves. The more we ask God to help us with our needs, the more we realize our spiritual poverty. This helps purify us from our pride. We slowly become humbled; finally, we will achieve such humility that we will have died to the self. Then we will have become pure at heart and see God:
It is more than clear that the humble man, the god-fearing man, knows perfectly well that nothing good, nothing straight and sure, happens in the soul without the help and the supervision of God, and therefore he does not stop praying unceasingly that God may act mercifully toward him. A man standing in need of everything from God is ready to make progress; he knows how he will make progress, and cannot be puffed up.[9]
Now, obviously, we do not get everything we ask for, and we do not use everything we get the best way it can be used.[10] Why, then, can it be said, we don’t get everything we should ask for, and why, then, do we get some things, when we think other things might be better for us? The answer to both, of course, is that God’s wisdom realizes more than we do what we should need, and what would be best for us to receive. Sometimes we ask for what is not best for ourselves, just as children often ask and demand for things which are not good for them.[11] Sometimes we ask for things which might be good for us, but not for those around us, and so it is not given, not because we could not use it properly, but others will abuse it and do greater harm (the same reason why parents might not give a toy to one child, not because the child would abuse it, but because they know their other children would). Finally, sometimes we get what we ask for, not because there is not something better, but it is good enough for us, and it is in accord with our wishes, in accord with our free will, and so God grants it so we can still have freedom of choice and decision, so that we can freely choose the kind of good which we seek after.
“When someone asks a human king for a load of manure, not only will he be despised as a result of his despicable request — seeing that he has accused himself by means of his own ignorance — but he has also offered an insult to the king by means of his stupid request.”[12] We can pray to God in the wrong way; prayer must be in humility and love, and done in the pursuit for the good, according to the way our conscience knows best. If we pray for something which we know is bad, our prayer can actually lead to our own undoing. But we are still given the chance for reformation. Because our petition contains aspects which are good and are capable of helping us move beyond ourselves, we can go from the wrong form of prayer to the right. Indeed, it is like a child, mocking their parents, asks for something they know their parents will not give and do not approve; if they do it enough, they might be punished, such as being sent to their room, whereby they are free to ponder their ways and hopefully change for the better. Thus, even bad prayers can be used to help us, and are still, however, shallow, within the realm of prayer and give hope for growth.
Now, it has been said, we often do not get what we pray for when we pray for it just once; we often have to pray for a considerable amount of time before we get it. There are many reasons for this. One, of course, is that we are discussing the personal, loving relationship we have with God, and God does not just act toward us like an impersonal force. We do not engage God with the expectation that we can control him and make him do our will as if by magic. We might not be able to predict the results, but the world, even in all our experimenting with it to try to create techniques to control it, shows itself to be unpredictable, “But is it not plain that this predictable world, whether it is necessary to our freedom or no, is not the world we live in?”[13] If this is true for the world, it is even more so with God. We know there is a good reason for his action or inaction, and we should seek to understand it. If we pursue it, we will eventually come to a right understanding of the situation (at least, on a human level). Another reason for why usually have to pray several times for the same request, and perhaps the best one for us to consider, is that sometimes what we want at one moment in time we soon find out we do not want, and it is best we did not get it when we asked for it:
Likewise because God moves us to the act of desiring, we showed that it is appropriate for Him to fulfill our desires. Now the thing that is moved is not brought to its end by the mover unless the motion be continued. So, if the movement of desire is not continued by constant prayer, it is not inappropriate for the prayer to fail to receive its expected result. Hence, the Lord says in Luke (18:1) ‘that we ought to always pray and not to faint’; also, the Apostle says, in I Thessalonians (5:17): ‘Pray without ceasing.’[14]
God expects us to petition and to show our desire for sometime, so that we can see if it is truly our own desire. If it is, we must also allow him to give it to us when he believes it would best help us or someone around us by granting our request.
Finally, we must address, in brief, Lewis’ confusion about prayer. If we know we will not always get what we pray for, then why are we to pray to God in the faithful expectation that we will get it? The answer, of course, is found in the question — we are to pray to God in faith, a faith in God’s love. In such faith, we will not be looking for self-glory but God’s glory, and hence, God’s will be done:
I write to you as men who love God, and seek Him with all your heart. For God will listen to such men when they pray, and will bless them in all things, and will grant them all the requests of their soul when they entreat Him. But those who come to Him not with their whole heart, but in two minds, who perform their works so as to be glorified by men — such men will not be listened to by God in anything that they ask Him, but rather He is angry at their works.[15]
Of course, if there is even a little love, if there is a little moving out of the self in prayer, that will be enough for God to work in us and transform us through prayer. Those who come in faith, come in love, and it is love which makes prayer potent. The expectation of faith, however, is not that God will fulfill our demands, but that God will provide to us what he deems is best. God certainly doesn’t need us to say the words in prayer to know our desires and needs, but rather, he has us petition him so that we can be made open to him and slowly understand the vision he has for us. “For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers in other words ‘that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give,’ as Gregory says (Dial. i, 8)”[16] Even without prayer, we continue to receive benefits from his providence, as the whole world does. But, as St Thomas Aquinas points out, it is by praying, and receiving through prayer, we begin to see God not just as a force over nature, but as the bountiful giver of all that which is good:
God bestows many things on us out of His liberality, even without our asking for them: but that He wishes to bestow certain things on us at our asking, is for the sake of our good, namely, that we may acquire confidence in having recourse to God, and that we may recognize in Him the Author of our goods. Hence Chrysostom says [Implicitly [Hom. ii, de Orat.: Hom. xxx in Genes.]; Cf. Caten. Aur. on Luke 18: ‘Think what happiness is granted thee, what honor bestowed on thee, when thou conversest with God in prayer, when thou talkest with Christ, when thou askest what thou wilt, whatever thou desirest.’[17]
Footnotes
[1] C.S. Lewis, “Work and Prayer,” 78.
[2] St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentile. Book III: Providence. Part 2. trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Garden City, New York: Hanover House, 1956), 62.
[3] An example of this can be found in the book of Exodus: “But Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, ‘O LORD, why does thy wrath burn hot against thy people, whom thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, `With evil intent did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and didst say to them, `I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.” And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people” (Exodus 32: 11- 14 RSV).
[4] Origen, “On Prayer” in Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer and Selected Works. trans. Rowan A Greer (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 94-5.
[5] St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent. trans. Colm Luibheid and Normal Russell (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 276.
[6] ibid., 278.
[7] Jean Danielou, Prayer. The Mission of the Church. trans. David Louis Schindler, Jr. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 1996), 6.
[8] “For a Christian, to pray is to make an act of faith, hope and love,” ibid., 7.
[9] Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses & Sayings. trans. Eric P. Wheeler (Kalamazoo: MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 101.
[10] This is also true when talking about prayer for others. In such an instance, prayer is similar to, but slightly different from, prayers for ourselves. In this way, one’s love is motivated to ask for God to interact with the life of someone else, and it becomes a point of contact between the person, the person they are praying for, and God. In this way is it the combination of two temporal horizons with eternity, and so the results are much more difficult to ascertain. Again, sometimes it is just the asking for God to help which will lead to his intervention. Sometimes it is the combination of many people, who are joining together for the sake of others, which leads to the intersection of enough personal histories with grace that the grace does come about and help the one who is being asked for. The first and primary purpose of grace is that helps bring about someone’s salvation. This, of course, sometimes will be done through mediators of grace, where people will touch others with God’s grace, either directly or indirectly. Thus, we can say that we pray for others first, for those who do not pray for themselves, hoping we will become a mediator of such grace to them, and then secondly for those who do pray, to help them, hoping our combined efforts to petition God might help create the providential intersection needed for the prayers to lead to their desired end. , Third, the saints themselves provide a special, greater way for prayer. On earth, as they are closing in on sainthood, they are more and more open to God and less and less closed in on themselves, so their very presence brings grace close to those who encounter them, and reveal to others how to become so open so as to experience such unity with God. Those who have completely attained the perfection of sainthood have completely united themselves to God and God’s work, so God works through them and their intercession as nodes of grace, where grace travel through them to us.
The point of all of this is to show that praying with others can be effective, and beneficial. It helps moves us further outside of ourselves. It also shows how Christians, praying together, form one greater, larger prayer, the prayer of the Church, which is mediated to God through the Theotokos:
“Every prayer of a weak and sinful human is powerless and limited in as much as it belongs to him, but when done in the Spirit and completed by the church it finds churchly wings which make it a prayer of the Church and raise it up to the very throne of God. Then, its might, power and authenticity bear no relation to its creaturely limitation any long. But as much as it is a church prayer and in it there is something personal, by outstripping itself, it grows into something universal, it becomes necessarily also a prayer of the Mother of God who, according to the testimony of church hymns, prays without ceasing to her Son for all peoples and all things,” Sergius Bulgakov, The Burning Bush. trans. Thomas Allan Smith (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 2009), 110.
What happens to one person, because of the interdependent nature of personhood, means others are affected, and prayer is always going to affect the Church as a whole. But the more we understand this, and share the grace given to us to the Church as a whole, and the more we share in the grace given to others, the more that combined grace can work for our corporate end.
“All authentic prayer is prayer of the church. Through every sincere prayer something happens in the church, and it is the church itself that is praying therein, for it is the Holy Spirit living in the church that intercedes for every individual soul ‘with sight too deep for words.’ This is what ‘authentic’ prayer is, for ‘no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.’ What could the prayer of the church be, if not great lovers giving themselves to God who is love?” St Edith Stein, “The Prayer of the Church” in The Hidden Life. trans. Waltraut Stein, PhD. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1992), 15.
[11] St Thomas Aquinas says the answer is similar to what we find when one friend asks another friend for something, or a patient asks their physician for something they think will help them, but in the end, in either case, would actually hurt the person if they received what they asked for. The friend or doctor, in their wisdom, will not grant it, and so God, as the doctor of our souls, does not grant all our petitions, even if we think they would help us in our suffering. “However, it happens at times that a person is refused because of friendship a petition which he asks of a friend, since he knows that it is harmful to him, or that the opposite is more helpful to him. Thus, a physician may deny sometimes the request of a sick person, having in mind that it is not beneficial to him in the recovery of his health. Consequently, since we show that God, because of his love which He has for the rational creature, satisfies his desires when they are presented to Him through prayer, it is no cause foe astonishment if at times e does not the petition, even of those whom He especially loves, in order to provide something that is more helpful for the salvation of the petitioner,” St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III-2, 61-2. It is also for this reason that sometimes what might be an actual good for one person, and is a known good, might still not be given to that person, because it will not entirely help them in their own spiritual life; St Paul did not have the ‘thorn in the flesh’ removed because it helped keep him humble, and that humility needed to be preserved. St Paul had previously acquired the habit of pride earlier in his life; so that he could attain his final salvation and grow in humility, therefore, his request was denied.
[12] St Isaac of Nineveh in The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life. trans. Sebastian Brock (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1987), 247. “From Discourse III.”
[13] C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1964), 37.
[14] St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III-2, 60-1.
[15] The Letters of Ammonas. trans. Derwas J. Chitty (Oxford: SLG Press, 1995), 4.
[16] St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros. edition, 1947), II-II, q.83, a.2.
[17] ibid., II-II q.83 a.2.
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