July 25, 2004: Praying with Deep Faith

The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 25, 2004


In the mail each month, I receive a handful of little magazines printed by various communities of nuns and priests. A few of these magazines have sections where they include people’s requests for prayers. Maybe you’ve seen them.

I really make it a point as I scan through the petitions to whisper a little prayer for the people. So many of the situations are heartbreaking: pray for successful cancer surgery… help my son get a job and my grandchildren to come back to the faith… pray for my husband to stop drinking… pray that my two sons will start talking to each other again… help me overcome my arthritis… pray that my son-in-law comes back home… pray for my 2-year-old grandson who has a brain tumor… and on and on goes the list.

Our faith assures us that God hears every one of these prayers. In fact, he knows of our needs and our prayers before we can even think of them, much less express them in our hearts and on our lips.

Our faith also assures us that God answers every one of these prayers. As the prophet Isaiah put it, “Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am” (Isa. 58, 9). Today’s beautiful Gospel makes the same point, telling us how much our Father in heaven loves us and will give us what we ask for.

This makes perfectly good sense. Let’s say that you’re praying for a child who’s fallen away from the Church. You desperately want him to get back. Do you think there’s any conceivable way that God does not want the same thing? Or what if you’re praying for an end to abortion… or world peace… or an end to terrorism… or Susie to go back to her husband… or a grandchild to get off drugs? Is it possible that God doesn’t want these things, too? Of course not.

Yet sometimes—in fact, lots of times—even our good and holy prayers don’t seem to get answered. We pray and we pray and we pray… and nothing seems to change.

Our faith and logic tell us that God answers prayers in his own time, not on our schedule—and, he has all of eternity to work with. But when you’re desperate and hurting, that’s not the answer you want to hear.

So maybe it’s no surprise that once in a while, people get angry at God or frustrated, and they simply say, “Oh, what’s the use?” and give up praying.

I think that we Catholics have to be ridiculous optimists about prayer—a new definition of a “fool for Christ”! We have to believe and hope that maybe just one more prayer will move God to act. Wouldn’t you hate to give up after a million prayers if you thought that a million and one would do the trick? That’s what we have to keep believing.

There was a very interesting poll that Newsweek Magazine published two or three years ago. It showed that 84% of Americans believe in divine miracles… that 67% of us pray for miracles… and that 77% of us Americans believe that even if a doctor gives a person no chance, God or the saints can intervene and bring about a cure. Now that’s the kind of optimism we need!

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a beautiful section on prayer that’s well worth reading. One statement is especially useful. It says that the prayer of faith consists not only in saying “Lord, Lord” but in disposing the heart to do the will of the Father.

In other words, as much as we may desire a particular outcome, the best prayer always adds: “But your will be done.” This means that we recognize that God can see the larger picture, and we should trust his judgment over our own in arranging things for the best—both in terms of what he does, and when he does it.

And of course, the beauty of this approach is found in the dictum that God will not be outdone in his generosity. So truthfully, when we put our hearts into this mode of thinking, we can honestly expect every prayer to be answered beyond our wildest dreams!

So if prayer seems to be coming hard, then pray for a bit more faith. That is the foundation you need. To illustrate this point, let me leave you with a little story.

There was a teenage girl named Melissa undergoing hospital treatment for anorexia and bulimia—two terrible eating disorders. One day, she was having a really hard time. The nurse brought in a glass of milk, but the girl said she just couldn’t drink it. So they called in the doctor. He came in, and sat down on the bed beside her. “Melissa,” he said, “you’re a Christian, correct?”

She answered yes.

So he said, “Do you remember the man blind from birth who Jesus healed near the pool of Siloam? He spit and made mud and rubbed it in the man’s eyes to heal him. But what really healed him?”

Melissa thought for a moment and then answered, “His faith.”

“Good,” said the doctor. “Now drink your mud.”



Today’s Readings
Genesis 18, 20–32
Psalm 138
Colossians 2, 12–14
Luke 11, 1–13