Pray With Heads and Hearts

6 October 1983
Santiago de Veraguas, Panama

My dear Confreres,

A child could understand this morning's Gospel without a word of explanation from its parent, teacher or priest. It is a marvelous feature of the parables of Our Lord that most of them could be understood by a child and, at the same time, the most profound of theologians will not exhaust the depths of riches which they contain.

Our Lord's words in today's Gospel are an encouragement to us to persevere in prayer and not be discouraged because God seems to be slow in answering our prayers. Perhaps the reason we become discouraged in prayer is that we feel in a vague sort of way that God is not taking us seriously. The fact is, of course, that it is we, very often, who are not taking God seriously. I remember meeting a person once who had become a member of a prayer group. At the first meeting the group prayed for one of his intentions and afterwards he obtained his request. This happened a second time a little later, and on the third occasion my friend exclaimed to the group: "I had better be careful in what I ask because God is taking me seriously." In saying this, my friend revealed that up to that time he didn't believe profoundly that God took him seriously when he asked for some grace or favor in prayer.

The truth is that it is not God Who fails to take us seriously when we pray to Him, but rather we fail to take God seriously. I do not mean that we are disrespectful towards God when we pray, but rather that in our heart of hearts we pray without full confidence that He is going to give us what we ask. I wonder if God is slow in answering our prayers at times in order to perfect the confidence which He wishes us to have in Him Who is our Father.

Sometimes I imagine that the reason of God's delay in answering our prayers is that He wants to make us ready to accept what He desires to give us. Often we ask God for favors with our heads but not with our hearts. At other times we ask God for favors with our hearts but not with our heads. He desires us to ask with both our hearts and our heads. "You shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart and with your whole mind and with your whole strength." (Mk 12:30). Prayer must always be an expression of the love that is in us for God, for His world, for His Church and for those who have so much less than we have, namely, His poor.

Today's Gospel centers on the prayer of petition. Ten or fifteen years ago there were some who discredited the prayer of petition. It was a consequence of the death of God theology. The death of God theology has lost much of its credibility in more recent years, and we have seen a revival of interest in prayer all over the world. Groups of people come together to pray because they believe more deeply than they did, in the power and efficacy of Christian prayer.

You may recall a passage from the writings of St. Augustine, which is presented to us in the Divine Office on this subject of petitionary prayer. In a letter to a lady called Proba, St. Augustine wrote: "God does not want our wishes to be made known to Himself, since He cannot be ignorant of them; but He wants our desire to be exercised in prayer, thus enabling us to grasp what He is preparing to give." In St. Augustine's view, a petitionary prayer is releasing from our hearts some of those thousands of desires that are locked up within them. St. Augustine would seem to say that God has too much respect for that inner sanctuary of our hearts to enter it unasked. So He invites us to present those desires to Him so that He in turn can fulfill them.

In my heart I know there is a desire to possess God. There is a desire to do His will. There is a desire to help my friends, a desire to help the poor. Every simple prayer of petition is a releasing from my heart of one of these desires in order that God may be allowed in His goodness to fulfill it. Community prayer can be seen as a presentation to God of some of those fundamental needs which we experience in Community in order that God Himself may fulfill them.

"Let your requests be made known before God," was St. Paul's advice to us. (Phil 4:6). St. Augustine adds: "Not in order that they may become known to God, but that they may become known to us in the sight of God."

I seem to have come to the end of this homily without drawing from the riches of St. Vincent's teaching on petitionary prayer. Let us leave the last word to him. To a Sister who had become discouraged because God had not apparently listened to her prayers, he wrote: "You say that you have already shed tears and offered prayers and novenas. All that is good. Our Lord has said, `Blessed are those who weep' and that those who ask shall receive. He has not, however, said that as soon as we will pray, we will be heard, and the reason for that is that He does not wish us to cease from praying. That is why, my Sister, you should not have said that word which escaped from you, that the more you pray, the less you obtain. That shows that you are not well resigned to the Will of God and that you do not trust sufficiently in His promises. Often through refusing us what we ask of Him, God actually gives us more grace. We ought to believe that, since He knows better what is good for us, He sends us the best, even when it is disagreeable to nature and contrary to our desires....I greet you with affection and I pray God that He will give you His holy strength and an abundance of blessings." (Coste VII, Fr. ed., 240-241, 243).