Does prayer change anything? And if so, is that a good thing? There are three major objections to consider:
- First, that due to predestination, everything is set in place, and our prayers can’t change anything.
- Second, that “prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me.” So the only one changed by prayer is me. After all, God is perfect and changeless.
- Third, due to God’s omniscience and omnipotence (that is, that He knows everything and is all-powerful), His plan is perfect, so our prayers shouldn’t do anything. After all, we’re not going to tell God anything that He doesn’t already know, and we’re not going to have a better plan than the one He already has, right?
In considering these things, the starting point for this needs to be James 5:13-18, the clearest Scriptural proof that prayer does change things, and not only us:
Is any one among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects. Eli′jah was a man of like nature with ourselves and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit.
St. James isn’t saying “there was going to be a drought anyway, but by prayer, Elijah really came to accept the inevitable.” No, he’s saying (as 1 Kings 18-19 also says) that the drought in the time of Elijah was both begun and ended by prayer. That’s quite clear: prayer changes things, things outside of ourselves; it even changes the course of history.
Nor is James alone in teaching this. When the Disciples ask why they couldn’t drive out a particularly powerful demon, Jesus responds, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting” (Mark 9:29). So not only does prayer change, there are some situations that only prayer can change. St. Paul writes to Philemon, “Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be granted to you” (Phil. 1:21-22). St. Paul’s hope is that Philemon will pray, and this prayer will change things. St. Peter, quoting Psalm 34:15, reminds us that “the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer” (1 Peter 3:12). What could this promise mean, if prayer does nothing?
The angel Gabriel reveals one of these answered prayers, presenting the conception of John the Baptist as an answer to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s prayers (Luke 1:13). The Book of Job reveals another. At the end of the book, God tells Job’s irreverent friends to “take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:8). Sure enough, they do so, and “the Lord accepted Job’s prayer” (Job 42:9).
But the boldest statement on prayer from Our Lord Himself: “whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22). In the face of this, who among us can claim that prayer does nothing?
But this mass of Scriptural evidence raises a theological question: how does prayer change things, if God is unchanging? “Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes us.” That’s true, but it’s too limited: it assumes that the only options are God changing His mind, or us changing. As I explained elsewhere:
You and I, we’re part of the Divine plan. We’re not just pieces in a great big cosmic machine that God has dreamed up. We’re the sons and daughters of God, and one of the major parts of the Divine Plan is for us to grow in intimacy with God. And so He answers prayers.
He is our Father. And parents say things like, “if you ask nicely, you can have dessert.” That’s not because you, as a parent, really want to give or withhold dessert, and it’s not because you need your kids to tell you that they like dessert. It’s because in raising your child to ask politely, your children become better. So, too, God teaches us to pray because prayer makes us better people, it makes us humbler, and it makes us better sons and daughters of God.
So let’s say one of your kids asks nicely, and you give her dessert; the other refuses to, and so you don’t. In neither case did your kids change your mind: you’re standing fast by your decree that “if you ask nicely, you can have dessert.” So when the living God says that “whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith,” our prayers aren’t altering the Divine Plan. They’re participating in it.
Of course, this means that there is a limit of sorts to the power of our prayers. If you’re praying for something wicked, don’t expect to get it. St. James puts the matter bluntly: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3). And of course, there are prayers which seem to go unanswered because God has something better than what we’re asking for.
St. Paul implicitly recognizes this when he tells Philemon to “prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be granted to you.” He’s not praying for anything wicked, but he knows that there are reasons he still might not get what he thinks he wants. He knew this experience quite personally, as Acts 16:6-10 shows:
And they went through the region of Phry′gia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come opposite My′sia, they attempted to go into Bithyn′ia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by My′sia, they went down to Tro′as. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedo′nia was standing beseeching him and saying, “Come over to Macedo′nia and help us.” And when he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedo′nia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
Paul’s plan is to go east, to evangelize southern Asia. That’s not a bad plan, but God had a better one, sending Paul west, to evangelize throughout the Roman Empire. Why did that matter? Because Greco-Roman culture was uniquely fertile for the Gospel, and it had a wealth of philosophical categories which enabled Christians both to explain the faith more clearly, and even to understand it better. Pope Benedict XVI described the dream to St. Paul this way:
The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” (cf. Acts 16:6-10) – this vision can be interpreted as a “distillation” of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
Without Greco-Roman culture, you don’t have “In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), a brilliant one-sentence bridge from Greek thought into the radical newness of the Gospel. So Paul had a good plan, but God had a much better one, and the world was forever changed as a result of that crossroads. Our own crossroads are likely not on the size, scope and scale of that one, but it’s hopefully an insight into why God seems to refuse even good, faithful prayers, and it reveals why the model prayer given to us by Christ includes the line “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done” (Matthew 6:10): because a truly faithful prayer is always to want what’s best, which is to say, to want what God wants. It just happens to be the case that what God wills is our free cooperation in His plans.
Thank you Joe.If I am getting you right, all answered and unanswered prayers stem from God’s will?
When Mary commented “they have no wine”, Jesus said that his time had not come, and then immediately afterwards he fufilled her implicit request. St. John insists that Jesus always did the will of the Father, thus, by Mary’s plea, the plan was changed because it was contingent on her prayer. The same is true in our case, However, all prayers have to harmonize with the underlying attitude found in Jesus, Mary, and the Our Father — if it is possible, but not, my will but yours be done.
And what was Mary’s response when Christ said, “Woman, what have I to do with thee, my hour is not yet come”? Scripture does not record that she remonstrated with her Son, only that she told the servants to “whatever he tells you to do, do it.”
Was this a thing, “known only to the Father|”? Was Mary’s prayer answered or was she inspired to make her request? And when the master of the banquet said, “Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now,” we all understand the power of the metaphor that Christ was God’s final “messenger”; first to the children of Israel and then to Gentiles and therefore the “best wine”, and course the congruence with the Last Supper is obvious also.
Interestingly, what appears to be the site of that banquet was recently found in Israel at Khirbet Cana https://aleteia.org/2018/06/18/is-this-where-jesus-turned-water-into-wine/
Ron Wyatt’s discoveries are in quite a different league, but neither Ron nor Dr. Tom McCollough were Roman Catholics.
I like the way St. Thomas sums it up:
“In order to throw light on this question we must consider that Divine providence disposes not only what effects shall take place, but also from what causes and in what order these effects shall proceed. Now among other causes human acts are the causes of certain effects. Wherefore it must be that men do certain actions. not that thereby they may change the Divine disposition, but that by those actions they may achieve certain effects according to the order of the Divine disposition: and the same is to be said of natural causes. And so is it with regard to prayer. For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate [ask for] that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers in other words ‘that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give,’ as Gregory says (Dial. i, 8)” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 83, Art. 2, Respondeo)
That we pray, not to change God’s will, but to fulfill it.
Nice comment, Anthony.
Interesting take. My issue with it is that the efficacy of petitionary prayer becomes unfalsifiable. Basically a good petition might not be granted because God has a better plan or because the degree of faith was insufficient, and a bad petition won’t be granted because it’s a bad petition. It just seems sophistical.
And if a good petition is one that’s in line with God’s will, then how are you supposed to know what that will is?
And how often are clear and distinct petitions (God please heal my amputated right arm) answered compared to vague and indistinct ones (God help me to feel better and more optimistic)? And if only vague and indistinct ones are being “answered” then what does that really say about the efficacy of prayer?
SOS!
Jesus told Pilate that He was the Truth and the witness to it. Can it be unfalsifiable that Jesus rose from the dead? If we cannot prove it false, what do we lose by believing what he said to be true? He said if we knock, the door would open. He said to persistently pray and to weary him as the widow importunely knocked at the judge’s door (Luke 18:1-8).
Jesus taught that prayer is answered. His will shall be made known as we extend effort to know it. His will is revealed through his words, His church, His Mystical Body. He said to ask him (pray). In Matthew 13:9, he suggested we use our ears to hear. He will reveal his answers–his will–in his time. We must be open to hear and accept the answers. The answers may be “no” (or silence) until we learn to ask for what is good. He will definitely give all that is good, better, and best. He said so.
After almost every miracle He performed, Jesus claimed the person’s faith was an important element of the miracle.
“He said so.”
This is a good example of how faith in Jesus’s words lead to true knowledge and understanding. If Jesus said: “Take and eat, this is my body”. …then those who believe in Jesus will accept what He says, and that it is truly His body that they are eating and drinking (in one way or another). This is the very nature of ‘revelation’. Jesus said that He came to reveal mysteries hidden since the foundation of the world. Who are we to correct a teacher who has this ability?
I don’t think God says no to particular prayers because he has something better planned. For example, I had an older relative (older by 22 years) who was abusive. She confessed to me one day, after I became an adult, that when I was child she would look at me and felt so much hatred for me that she wanted to physically hurt me. She never laid a finger on me but she always made it known to me that I was beneath her and not worthy of dignity. It lasted for almost 25 years. During those early years I prayed God would make things better, that all of the abuse would stop. It never really did until I finally cut off all contact with her and most of my family. I haven’t spoken or seen her in 7 years. Why would God take so long to say yes to my prayer? Was it so I could make reparations for her or someone else? Was it just to receive grace? I’m not allowed to see the big picture yet until I’m dead so I’d like to be enlightened because making reparations and receiving grace and persevering aren’t exactly consoling answers to prayer. I’m aware that sin is the cause of problems in life but I would like to have better answers rather than the standard ones that Catholics have when it comes to unanswered prayers.
A,
Your comment touched me deeply. I have a similar story except that it was a type of betrayal. For over 35 years, I went through life, thinking that a close family relative really and truly and greatly loved me. I took personal care of that person’s physical, social, total needs, 24/7 (with about one day total respite help) for one of the last years of her life. The torment doled upon me defies description. Every small deed, look, word, situation where that relative had ever felt unloved by me (as a child) was brought duly and daily drilled into my consciousness. I most certainly did not call that love. I had some but not much idea of her carrying this with her, only to unleash it in her last days.
After about a year of tears, talking at length with a priest, I learned, over time, what we discerned to be my need to be purified of the harmful effects often contained within great human love. That is about as good as I can give you. God’s love is reflected but imperfectly in human relationships because no one is capable of perfect love except Him. Who else could die on a cross in order to save all humanity for all time? God, being pure spirit, perhaps calls us to a different level of relationship love, one which hurts deeply but which teaches a more disinterested love.
[Interestingly, there had been some point in my earlier relationship with this person where I prayed that my inadvertently hurting of her would be shown me when she died. Call it justice?]
It is interesting to note that nowhere in the Gospels does Christ refer to or address Mary as his mother, instead he addresses her as “woman”. Only at Calvary does he refer to their relationship when he appoints another to be her “son” and she that man’s “mother”. We know of course that she must have told much to the early fathers of the Church – I’m sorry it wasn’t the Roman Church – which they could not have otherwise known, unless by Divine Revelation.
One question,
If we are not mere part of the cosmos, but part of God’s plan. If I marry the wrong person, do I destroy God’s plan?
How will God interact with me if I go a wrong path, and can I just interfere with his plan like that?
Thanks,
Dan
Only if we are faithful to God in all things.