Parish Missions

Why Do We Pray

At the Western Wall in Jerusalem I saw a blind man

being led to the wall. He felt the stones with his fingertips,

applied a gentle kiss to the sacred stones, and began to

speak to G-d. Although he spoke very rapidly, I could catch

some of the words. He was relating to G-d various things

that had happened to him, and some of his requests.

At one point he stopped abruptly, “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.

“I already told You that yesterday.”

The sincerity of the man’s prayer was electrifying. He

had no doubt whatever that what he had said yesterday had

been heard.

--Abraham Twerski, Living Each Day

Why is it that we pray? The blind man in this anecdote is clearly having a very personal and private conversation with God. It is highly personal because it has to do with his particular life situation, and it is private because, though overheard, it is clearly between the man himself and God. The storyteller is stunned by the intimacy of the prayer and by the deep faith of the blind man. Today’s Scriptures, like the story of the blind man at the Western Wall, inform us of this relational aspect of prayer. Prayer is all about relationships. In the story of Abraham and in the Lord’s Prayer relationships of dependence rooted in humility are clearly established.

If these models of prayer are relational, then they are also about communication. Jesus gives evidence of this with his opening address to God as Father, which is the familiar and intimate “Daddy” of the original language. That kind of intimacy presumes a history of dialog. Abraham also is clearly in an intense, if somewhat humorous, negotiation with God in the Genesis reading. Even the example Jesus offers in the parable of the midnight caller is clearly a two-way communication, making it clear that prayer is not about a monologue. There is an interaction that is real and personal.

The question for us today is how our prayer measures up to these biblical models of prayer.

So often our own prayer misses the mark of dialog. Especially we Catholics never give God “a word in edgewise”! There is nothing wrong with rosaries and novenas, litanies and chaplets, but if they are left solely to the role of rote recitation, they fall short of what Jesus and the Scriptures today are asking us to consider. In all our prayer forms, including, and especially, our Eucharistic Prayer, we must remember that prayer is first of all a form of communication. It is relational. If we do all the talking it would be hard to escape the judgment that we are trying to control God. If we do all the talking, even if it is to claim our lowliness, our sinfulness, we are still controlling the conversation, which becomes a monologue rather than a dialog. In prayer we are not in charge.

It seems that we also think that we are doing God a favor by praying. There is a Preface to one of the Eucharistic Prayers for Weekdays that reads:

You have no need of our praise;

yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift.

Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness,

but only helps us grow in your grace through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

This addresses another element of relationship in prayer. Jesus’ prayer to his “Daddy” establishes a relationship that is so difficult for us in this affluent culture to accept. Asking God to “give us this day our daily bread” establishes our utter dependence on God, a dependence that flies in the face of First World independence and self-sufficiency. Even though, I would suspect that most prayers offered are prayers of petition, they are seldom reduced to the profoundly simple request of “this day our daily bread.”

That’s the “electrifying” impact of the blind man’s prayer. That’s the electrifying impact of the prayer that is the Mass. The memorial of Christ’s self-sacrificing love in the Eucharist needs no other response than “thanks,” the very meaning of the Greek root eucharistia. It was, it is, pure gift. If he would offer his life so we could have eternal life, what further evidence would we need of divine providence? That should be the root of all our prayer. Then and only then will our prayer be efficacious, whether it's in the form of Abrham's negotiation or the persistent petition of a midnight visitor.

We need this Sunday to examine our prayer life. Is our prayer truly relational? Is our prayer a real dialog? Are we in the habit of listening to what God has to say to us? I recently came across another narrative vignette that might very well be the result of affirmative responses to those questions.

There is a story told of an old peasant who used

to spend hours and hours sitting in the chapel

motionless, doing nothing. The priest said to him,

“What are you doing all these hours?” The old

peasant answered, “I look at him,he looks at me,

and we are happy.” --Anthony Bloom