Why Pray?
BY JOE SIXPACK
“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:7-11).
People have asked me many times why they should bother praying when God never answers their prayers. They often cite this promise made by Jesus to imply — and sometimes angrily assert — that the promise is a lie. Grieving parents and others grieving over loved ones are angry because they begged God to save the life of the one for whom they’re grieving. A prisoner once asked why he should pray for parole after more than twenty years of praying. (This particular man injured someone in a traffic accident and received a life sentence because the injured woman’s husband was the former state attorney general. Shameful!)
Others were facing financial ruin through no fault of their own and begged God for help, only to be ruined anyway. The list of complaints could go on and on, and I’m certain you can think of many who feel the same way. Perhaps even you have wondered why God seemed to ignore your prayers.
No one understands and empathizes more with these people than I do. I used to feel the same way. The typical answer given by well-meaning Christians when people wonder aloud why bother to pray when the prayers go unanswered is not a bad answer. Indeed, it’s a good answer — just not a complete answer.
The typical answer given is this: God always answers prayers; He always either says no, yes, or yes but not now. Then they go on to explain that He says no the way your earthly father would do if you asked for something that could harm you. They further explain that He says yes but later so you can gain the greatest spiritual and temporal benefit from His gift to you.
While this explanation is absolutely true, it simply isn’t complete. Nor is it fully honest. I’m not saying that folks who give such an answer are intentionally being dishonest. I’m convinced they’re being as honest as they can. I tend to think they really don’t know the full, honest answer.
It’s true that Jesus told us to ask for whatever we want. He told us over and over again to ask for what we want and that the Father would give it to us.
Perhaps the strongest promise Jesus made about asking for what we want in prayer is found in Matt. 21:19-22: “And seeing a fig tree by the wayside he went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only. And he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it they marveled, saying, ‘How did the fig tree wither at once?’ And Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and cast into the sea” it will be done. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith’.”
People love to point to promises such as these and complain about them not being true. Many folks who try to explain how God answers prayer, when faced with this passage, focus on Jesus’ words “and never doubt,” implying the person praying did indeed doubt. There could be some truth to that, but I’ve personally believed without doubt and still not been given what I asked for.
So what’s the answer? Did Jesus lie to us? Did He make a promise He won’t keep?
The answer to those questions is an imperative NO! He most certainly made a promise, and Jesus always keeps those promises. The unfortunate reality is, people only pay attention to what they like and dismiss what they don’t like. In other words, we all have selective hearing and use selective reading comprehension.
The passage at the beginning of this article comes from the Sermon on the Mount narrative. Matthew’s version of that sermon takes almost all of chapters five, six and seven. It’s the longest example of Christ’s preaching in the Gospels.
Everyone isolates the promises, but fail to pay attention to the rest. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us a lot of other things besides His promises. He gives us the beatitudes, tells us to make our faith shine to others, preaches of the evil of anger, demands we be chaste in mind and body, condemns divorce and remarriage, warns us about the taking of oaths, insists we love our enemies, teaches us how to pray and insists we do so in earnest, tells us to fast and do penance for our sins, tells us to trust in God for even the smallest of things, demands that we not judge others, and tells us to treat everyone else how we want to be treated.
Whew!
Yes, He made a great promise about getting anything we want in prayer, but He gave us all these conditions that must be met as well before the promise. God doesn’t run some sort of heavenly lottery. He doesn’t just hand out whatever we want the way a parent spoils a child. Would you slap your parent in the face then ask for a favor? Of course not, and if you did you’d be a fool to expect that parent to grant the favor, but that is exactly what we do if we haphazardly live our faith or remain in our vincible ignorance of it. Jesus so hates our complacency in faith that He said, “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15-16). (Some versions of Scripture replace the word spew with the word vomit.)
He places conditions on getting what we ask for. God demands that we live wholly and unreservedly the faith established by Jesus Christ — which is the faith taught and jealously guarded by His holy Catholic Church — if we are to expect Him to fulfill the promises made to us.
So, if you want Jesus to keep His promises — especially His promises of answered prayers — then you need to learn the Catholic faith as best you can, live the faith as best you can, then do your level best to fulfill another of Jesus’ commands from the Sermon on the Mount: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).
In other words, you are commanded by Christ to become a saint. For most of the saints in our 2,000-year history — both canonized and uncanonized — that perfection was a lifelong effort that was only finally consummated at death. But the fact is, they obeyed.
If you have a question or comment you can reach out to me through the “Ask Joe” page of JoeSixpackAnswers.com, or you can email me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
Hey, how would you like to see things like this article every week in your parish bulletin as an insert? You or your pastor can learn more about how to do that by emailing me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
