Thomas McGinnis, O.Carm.
saint John Damascene has defined prayer as the elevation of the mind to God and the petition of fitting things from Him. Still, we read in St. Matthew’s Gospel that our Father in heaven knows without our telling Him, all those things which we need (Matt. 6: 32). And we know too that God’s will is immutable, not to be affected by our petitions: But the triumpher in Israel will not spare, and will not be moved to repentance; for he is not a man that he should repent (I Kings 15: 29). It is impossible that we should enlighten God by our petitions, that we should make Him alter His designs, since He has said to us: I am the Lord, and I change not (Mai. 3: 6). Yet we find in the words of the Savior not only the precept of prayer, that we must pray always and not lose heart (cf. Luke 18: 1), but also an assurance of prayer’s infallible efficacy: Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it shall be opened (Matt. 7: 7).
The Necessity and Efficacy of Prayer
The reconciliation between the immutability and omniscience of God on the one hand, and the precept of. prayer on the other, is to be found in the truth of God’s providence, from the consideration of which we can see clearly the utility of prayer, as well as its necessity and efficacy. Indeed, God’s providence does not decide simply which effects will be produced in time; it decides also from which causes these effects will be produced, in what order they will be produced. Among these causes are often found human acts; thus, for example, God has willed that there should be a harvest, but not without the laborious sowing of seed. Now it is evident that man in such cases does not act in order to change the divine disposition, but in order to effect results according to the plan decreed by God. The same is true of prayer; we do not pray in order to change the divine disposition, but in order to obtain that which God has decreed to give only in answer to worthy prayer. As St. Gregory the Great put it: « By prayer, man merits to receive what God has from all eternity decreed to give him ». A description of prayer considered in its function of secondary or subordinate cause is found in the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross: « ...although God knows and understands all things, and sees and observes even the least of the thoughts of the soul, yet He is said to see our necessities or to hear them, when He relieves them or fulfils them; for not all necessities or all petitions reach such a point that God hears them in order to fulfill them, until in His eyes the number of them is sufficient and there has arrived the proper time and season to grant them or relieve them » (Stanza II, 4).
Hence we see that, far from being useless, prayer is necessary: necessary to obtain God’s help, to lead an interior life, just as seed is necessary for the harvest. Moreover, prayer is infallibly efficacious because God, Who cannot contradict Himself, has decreed that it should be. True, humble, trusting prayer, by which we ask for ourselves what is necessary for salvation, is never lost. It is heard at least in this sense, that it obtains for us the grace to continue praying.
