A Sneaky Thing Prayer Does

Photo by Mikhail Vasilyev on Unsplash

I had a friend once who used to say “God willing!” all the time. To be honest, it kind of drove me nuts.

“See you on Thursday!” I would say, and “God willing!” She would reply.

Come on. Seriously? What was going to happen? An earthquake? Car crash? Lightning strike? You’re going to make me contemplate our deaths right now?

I knew she was right, though. Our only goal in life, always and everywhere, should be to do the will of God. We should live our lives with the next life in mind. It’s just that in practice, doing that can seem so…morbid.

Prayer is About Embracing God’s Will

My reticence about my friend’s perpetual “God willings” made me think of the Penny Catechism. Are you familiar with it? This small booklet of doctrine teaches children the basics of our Catholic faith. I grew up with the Baltimore Catechism and was not familiar with this one until years later when it was part of the curriculum at the small Catholic school where my husband Dan taught. 

Much like the Baltimore Catechism, it’s set up as a series of questions and answers, and many of them were familiar to me:

Why did God make you?
God made me to know him, love him and serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next.

I memorized these lines as a little girl and love their simplicity. When life gets crazy, stressful, and complicated, I frequently remind myself that this is all we ever need to do: Know love and serve God so we can be happy with him forever in the next. That’s it! Do that much, and you’re all set.

When I browsed through the Penny catechism, though, one line caught my attention. In fact, it made me laugh out loud. It goes like this:

After your night prayers, what should you do?
After my night prayers, I should observe due modesty in going to bed; occupy myself with the thoughts of death; and endeavor to compose myself to rest at the foot of the Cross, and give my last thoughts to my crucified Savior. 

I didn’t mind the modesty and resting at the foot of the Cross parts. It was occupying myself with the thoughts of death that made me laugh. Was that really going to help me drift off to sleep?

I know this is technically correct. We need to be reminded of our deaths. We must live our lives in this world with our hearts and minds focused on the next. Memento Mori and all that.

But it’s so easy to be attached to the things of this world. We don’t want to die.

Prayer is not a transaction

Sometimes, when you pray a novena, there are words built in that go something like this: “Lord, I know that you may not fulfill all of my desires as I am requesting here. Help me to embrace your will in place of my own.”

I know it shouldn’t, but this also drives me crazy. Here I am praying the novena. I want what I want. I’m not looking to be changed. 

And that’s my problem. Because prayer is all about change.

The night before he suffered and died, Jesus gave us a perfect example of prayer as he anticipated and truly dreaded what lay ahead:

“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)

I’m quite good at praying that first part. Take away my suffering and give me good things, Amen. That’s my kind of prayer.

I’m not so good at praying the second part, about wanting God’s will to be done in place of my own. I’m working on it, and I take heart in the fact that Jesus, fully human as he is, prays both parts of that prayer in the garden. He gets us. He understands that we want things, sometimes very specific things, and his example tells us that bringing all our desires to prayer is good.

But prayer is not a gumball machine where you put your money in, turn the handle, and get your prize. It’s not a transaction. Prayer is meant to change us. If you're going to pray, you need to be prepared for that.

A few years ago, I read the following by Fr. Bernard Bro, OP, in Magnificat:

“The purpose of prayer is perhaps less to obtain what we ask than to become someone else. We should go further and say that asking something from God transforms us, little by little, into people capable of sometimes doing without what they ask for. If God takes his time, he does so for our sake. Because of the unusually delicate nature of his love, he does not want to effect our happiness without us, but wants to produce it from within, to make us work at it and give it to us only after exhausting the possibilities of our waiting…The purpose of prayer is to bring this desire, which leaves a man restless and disturbed, to become a feeling of hope, guaranteed, but by an infinite effectiveness since it comes from God himself.”

Prayer Doesn’t Always Feel Good

Sneaky, right? We think prayer is about getting what we want, but prayer is actually about changing ourselves. And change can be painful. It doesn't always feel good to be transformed into people capable of doing without what we ask for. 

I’m still working to understand it, but prayer serves a profound purpose beyond merely obtaining our desires; it’s meant to be a transformative experience through which we allow God to reshape our very selves. Through the act of asking, we gradually become people who can sometimes forgo what we initially sought, growing in patience and resilience. Though often hard to understand, God's timing is a testament to his delicate and nurturing love, designed to foster our happiness from within rather than impose it upon us. We grow closer to God. 

While this prayer process may seem frustratingly slow, it cultivates a deeper sense of hope and assurance rooted in the boundless power of God’s love. It might not always seem so, but prayer ultimately gives us what we want. It encourages us to align our restless, fickle desires with divine hope. The more we do that, the more we gain a profound sense of peace and fulfillment that transcends our immediate wants. 

Prayer makes us holy. We are created to know, love, and serve God. He is what we actually want. Prayer changes us into people who can see that, want that, and embrace it.