A Primer on Prayer

Have you ever had to politely give a critique to someone you cared about? Maybe it was a friend or a coworker, or maybe your child – or yes, even your spouse. Maybe you have had to explain something about the particular culture of your family or your workplace, or maybe something generally about societal expectations. I remember one time having to explain to a friend how he tended to dominate the conversation, and that it was polite to let others have a chance to chime in.

It is never easy to offer a critique to someone you care about. To do it well you want convey the important information to the other person without crushing their spirit. In a sense, I think that is what Jesus is trying to do for us in the Gospel today. He is gently pointing out how we tend to not be very good at prayer. We can run into problems with praying in many ways, but Jesus addresses two of the most common in our Gospel today.

In the first regard, we can lack persistence in our prayer. That is, we give up too easily! We may pray for an intention, or a particular person, or in a particular moment of need, but when the going gets tough, too often we fail to persist. Perhaps we get tired from prayer, or perhaps we grow discouraged. But, as Jesus shows to us, our attitude with God should be one of stubborn persistence – even to the point of obnoxiousness. As he says, even a dishonest judge, who cared nothing about God or man, decided to rule on behalf of the woman because of her persistence; how much more then will God, who is good and gracious and desires our well-being at every moment, respond to us who believe in him.

Of course, God being God, we should not expect that he would act in precisely the way we would want. Sometimes we may not get what we ask for, or we don’t get it in the time or manner we would prefer. Does that mean he doesn’t love us? No – in fact, just the opposite. It’s because of God’s all-encompassing love that he allows us to go through difficulty, even sometimes letting our prayers seemingly go unanswered, in order to bring forth some greater good. God knows what is good for us, and desires it, even more fully than we do, and we must trust him even when we can’t see how he is at work in the present moment.

Jesus asks an important question at the end of the Gospel today: “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” This is a good admonition for when our prayer seems one-sided; the Lord sometimes requires that we continue to trust in him, to have faith, even when we can’t see the end result. But I think Jesus is also speaking to the second problem we have with prayer: at times we are not very faithful. In other words, not only do we often give up too soon, but sometimes we fail to really believe and trust that God will answer our prayers. How often do we say to someone, “Let me pray about that!” or “Yes, I’ll pray for you!” But do we really follow through? Prayer should be the foundation of how we think and discern and act, and we need to carve out a daily space in order to build up that foundation. I know we might say, “Oh Father, I’m so busy, I can’t find the time to pray!” But that’s precisely it – being so busy can disorient us, and lead us often to poor, rash choices. We need that time to pray precisely because we are busy.

Thomas Brigstocke, Moses with His Arms Supported by Aaron and Hur (c. 1860)

In the first reading, Moses kept his arms raised because he knew – he could see – how God responded to his prayers. He got physically tired and so he had help in keeping his arms raised. For us, what bothers us is not so much physical but spiritual fatigue, especially when we do not immediately see how prayer benefits us. I think the devil tempts us away from prayer often through frustration and a feeling of being either unworthy or unsuccessful in our prayer. But like Moses, we have to persist, and not allow ourselves to stop praying or to doubt that God is at work for our good. Prayer is not just about asking for and getting what we want – it’s about learning to deepen our trust in God himself, and deepening the relationship we have with him. That’s why time in prayer is never wasted – even if we are distracted, or feel as if we didn’t feel anything, or didn’t gain any new insight, or even if we wished we had done something else entirely with our time! God knows the value of our prayer much better than we do, and so he will use it in the way that he knows best.

Friends, let’s listen to the gentle critique Jesus is offering us today, in how we relate to God, especially in how we pray to him and how we trust in him. In a sense, it is doesn’t matter how good or how poor we may feel we are at prayer, we all have room for further growth. In the end, Jesus today is encouraging us to pray as he himself did – continuously, never wavering, but praying always with the certainty that not only was God listening but that he was acting as well. Our prayer must be rooted, as his was, in a relationship with the Father in heaven – in the persistent practice of turning to him in need and relying upon him, each and every day, to be with us, to assist us, to give us what we need.