October 20, 2013
Reflection
What is prayer? And, perhaps more importantly, what does it do?
There may be no single subject in all of religion that has been scrutinized more closely and debated more vigorously than the nature and purpose of prayer. Broadly speaking, most would agree that prayer is communication with God. But what kind of communication? Must one cross oneself at the beginning in order to initiate the conversation? (And re-cross oneself if one “hung up,” but then thought of something else.)
Is prayer primarily the recitation of rote formulas—the repetition of syllables that constitute a Hail Mary or Our Father? Can it be action oriented? Does it count as prayer to sit silently at a vigil protesting the execution of an inmate, or to wash dishes at a soup kitchen following a meal? Can vacuuming the floor before hosting friends be considered a prayer? How about a walk through the Arboretum in fall, when one is struck by the beauty of the foliage and the peacefulness of the path? Is it a form of prayer to let fly a
profanity following God’s name in a moment of pure human anguish?
In today’s Gospel story, we see Jesus., who previously has compared God to an infinitely forgiving father in the Prodigal Son, and a shepherd who would leave behind 99 of His flock to search for one lost sheep, introduces a decidedly less flattering comparison—an unjust judge who relents not because it is the right thing to do, but because this widow wears him down. Jesus’ point is: if even someone who cares not a bit about you or your needs will eventually give in to your requests, simply due to your incessant petitioning, imagine how much more effective those same requests will be when you go to someone who cares immensely about you and would love to help you attain happiness!
But is that how prayer works? Do we simply go to God with a particular concern or need and ask that our request be granted, in our own understanding and on our own terms? Is that the experience of believers—that they simply go to God and ask that their mother be cured of breast cancer or they land the amazing job they just interviewed for or pass the qualifying exam they’ve spent months fretting over—and God simply grants the request because we’ve asked? It seems that this sort of prayer is more akin to rubbing a magical lamp and expecting God to materialize like a genie. Is prayer simply the religious believer’s version of wishing? By saying that “God does not answer my prayers,” do we really mean, “God has not granted me my wishes?”
The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard suggested that, “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but to change the nature of the one who prays.” Mahatma Gandhi added, “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is a daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” Helen Keller and numerous others have remarked that we should pray not for challenges equal to our strength, but for strength equal to our challenges.
What each of these quotes gets to is this notion of prayer not as something that is going to change God’s mind, but as something that radically transforms us, the one who is praying. It is to suggest that, in praying, we are acknowledging our limitations as humans. Our need for outside help. It has been observed that most prayers can be described as an admittedly unworthy person begging God for the laws of the universe not to apply to a given situation. I pray that I will somehow magically pass a final, despite not having spent sufficient time studying. I pray for my parent’s rapidly metastasizing cancer not to spread, even though the doctors agree there is little to be done to stop it.
We may find that the cancer does, miraculously, disappear (and certainly many people can tell us stories of these apparent Divine interventions). But more likely, we find that our prayers are “ineffective,” so to speak. By which we mean that our wish was not granted… at least not in the way we wanted. Still, perhaps we have realized that modern medicine can do only so much against cancer, or that we can handle only so much anxiety by ourselves, before we are forced to turn to family members, friends, and other persons in the human community that can support us in such a moment of anguish. Perhaps we have been changed by the experience, in some way, even if we cannot see it in the moment and it feels as though God simply did not hear our prayers.
We may not always get what we (think we) want. But if we trust in the providence of God—if we have faith that God really does have a plan both for our lives and for the larger universe—we may also find that, as the British philosopher Mick Jagger pointed out, we get what we need.
Reflection Questions
1) If someone totally unfamiliar with religion asked you for a definition of prayer, how would you define it? What sorts of things “count” as prayers?
2) In your understanding, what is the purpose of prayer? Do you get anything out of it? Have you found that God “answers” your prayers? What would you say is the ultimate outcome of your praying? Does it make any difference at all?
3) Do you, personally, right now in your life, pray? What form does it take? Do you pray every day? Always in the same way? What other types of prayer have you thought about trying? How might you go about expanding your experience of prayer?
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