Chapter I: The Nature, Efficacy, and Object of Prayer

1. NATURE OF PRAYER.—Prayer (εὐχή, προσευχή, oratio) may be broadly defined as the act of raising the mind to God. All intelligent creatures are bound to think of God now and then and hold converse with Him in order to exercise their faith, hope, and charity.¹ This converse may be mental (verbum mentis) or vocal, i.e., expressed in words (verbum oris).²

¹ St. Augustine, Enchiridion, c. 7: “Faith believes; hope and charity pray. But without faith they cannot exist, and by this very fact faith also prays.” (Migne, P. L., XL, 234).—IDEM, Epist., 130 (al. 121), c. 9, n. 18: “In faith, hope, and charity themselves, we always pray with continual desire. But for this reason, at fixed intervals of hours and times, we also ask God in words, so that by signs of things we may admonish ourselves, may make known to ourselves how much progress we have made in this desire, and may stir ourselves more ardently to increase it. For a more worthy effect will follow when a more fervent affection precedes it.” (P. L., XXXIII, 501).

² Ps. XXIV, 1.—St. John Chrysostom, Homil. in Gen., XXX, c. 7: “Prayer is discourse with God.” (Migne, P. G., LIII, 280).—St. John Damascene, De Fide Orth., l. III, n. 24: “Prayer is an ascent of the mind to God or a request of fitting things from God.” (P. G., XCIV, 1089).—St. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps., LXXXV, n. 7: “Your prayer is speech to God: when you read, God speaks to you; when you pray, you speak to God.” (P. L., XXXVII, 1086).—Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 250: “Prayer, taken broadly, is an elevation of the mind to God, or any pious affection of the soul toward God and supernatural things. In the stricter sense, however, it is a request of fitting things from God.”—A. Poulain, S.J., The Graces of Interior Prayer, 2nd ed., pp. 1 sqq.

Prayer in all its forms—adoration, praise, petition, thanksgiving—constitutes an act of divine worship, because when a man prays he honors and reveres God and acknowledges Him to be the author of all goodness. Prayer is, therefore, not merely man’s voluntary acknowledgment of his entire dependence on God, but likewise the first and most immediate act of worship, and consequently an essential element of that natural religion which is found among all nations, even the most degraded savages.³

³ E. v. Lasaulx, Studien des klassischen Altertums, Ratisbon 1854, pp. 137 sqq.; J. Döllinger, Heidentum und Judentum, Ratisbon 1857, pp. 199 sq., 369, 526 sq.; W. Schneider, Die Naturvölker, Vol. II, pp. 269 sq., 347 sqq.; C. Ausfeld, De Graecorum Precationibus, Leipsic 1903.

Prayer attains its highest and most perfect development in the Catholic Church, which teaches that we must “adore the Father in spirit and in truth,”⁴ and assures us that we have in Christ a Mediator through whom we shall receive whatever we ask for in His name.⁵

⁴ John IV, 24.

⁵ John XV, 16; cfr. Matt. VI, 9; Mark I, 35; Luke XI, 1 sqq.; John XIV, 13 sq.; XVI, 23; Heb. V, 7; VII, 25.

In Gen. IV, 26 we read that Enos, the son of Seth, “began to call upon the name of the Lord.” This rather obscure text can not mean, as some pretend, that Enos invented prayer or was the first to introduce public worship. The former hypothesis is unlikely on a priori grounds, while the second is refuted by the fact, attested by the same holy Book, that long before Enos was born, Cain and Abel publicly “offered gifts to God.” As to what the passage does mean, exegetes are not agreed. Some think it marks the institution of solemn public sacrifice. Others regard it as a testimony to the ancient use of the name “Yahweh,” thinking that Enos began to worship God by that name. A third group maintains that in the days of Enos the pious Sethites began to be known as children of Yahweh, in opposition to the wicked descendants of Cain, who called themselves “sons of men.” The last-mentioned assumption derives plausibility from the fact that in Gen. VI, 2 the Sethites are called simply “sons of God.” However, we rather incline to the opinion that Gen. IV, 26 was originally a gloss, explaining that before Enos it was forbidden to pronounce the name of God, and that this gloss, through an error made by some careless copyist, slipped into the sacred text.⁶

⁶ Cfr. A. B. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel, Vol. I, Leipsic 1908, pp. 25 sq.

2. EFFICACY OF PRAYER.—Christ said: “Your Father who is in heaven, [will] give good things to them that ask him.”⁷ This oft-repeated promise can have but one meaning, namely, that the right kind of prayer is sure to be heard by God. Prayer, in other words, is absolutely certain in its effects. Moreover, it strengthens man’s friendly relations with God, confirms faith, invigorates hope, kindles love, enlightens the intellect, steels the will, purifies the heart, and thus disposes the soul for the fruitful reception of grace.⁸

⁷ Matt. VII, 11; cfr. XVIII, 19 sq.; Jas. V, 16.

⁸ Ps. XLIX, 15; John XVI, 24; cfr. Tertullian, De Orat., c. 24: “Prayer alone is what conquers God. . . . Prayer is the wall of faith, our arms and weapons against the man who watches us from every side. Therefore let us never walk unarmed. By day let us remember our station, by night our vigil. Under the arms of prayer let us guard the standard of our emperor; let us await the angel’s trumpet while praying.” (Ed. Leopold, P. II, 16).—St. John Chrysostom, Homil. in Gen., XXX, n. 5: “For prayer is truly a great thing, a great security, a great treasure, a great harbor, an inviolate place.” (Migne, P. G., LIII, 279).—Pseudo-Augustine, Append. Serm., 47 (al. 226 de Temp.): “The prayer of the just is the key of heaven. Prayer ascends and God’s mercy descends. Although the earth is low and heaven high, God nevertheless hears the tongue of a man, if he has a clean conscience.” (Migne, P. L., XXXIX, 1838).—Serm., 55 (al. 4 ex Homil., 50), n. 1: “He truly knows how to live rightly who knows how to pray rightly.” (P. L., XXXIX, 1849).—On Luther’s teaching concerning the efficacy of “right prayer” (oratio vera) see Denifle, Luther und Luthertum, Vol. I, 2nd ed., pp. 109 sqq. (Eng. tr. by R. Volz, Luther and Lutherdom, Vol. I, Part I, Somerset, O., 1917, pp. 113 sqq.)

Besides these general effects, prayer has a very special one, namely, to obtain for us the things for which we ask, provided, of course, we pray in the right spirit, i.e., with due regard to God’s honor and the salvation of souls. It is in this sense that Christ says: “All things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.”⁹

⁹ Matt. XXI, 22; cfr. Matt. VI, 5 sqq.; VII, 7 sq.; XVIII, 19 sq.; XXVI, 39, 42; Mark XI, 24 sq.; John XIV, 13 sq.; XV, 7, 16; XVI, 23; cfr. 1 Kings III, 18.—F. Schmid, Die Wirksamkeit des Bittgebetes, Brixen, 1895.

When St. Monica grieved for her wayward son Augustine, a bishop advised her “to pray for him to the Lord” and consoled her with the assurance: “It is impossible for a son of so many tears to be lost.”¹⁰

¹⁰ “It cannot happen that the son of so many tears should perish.” St. Augustine, Confessiones, III, c. 12 (Migne, P. L., XXXII, 691).

The objections usually made against the efficacy of prayer are inspired by Pantheistic or Deistic prepossessions and cannot stand the clear white light of Christian revelation.¹¹ Prayer is not incompatible with belief in God and the immutability of His Providence. We do not appeal to God to tell Him our needs, which He knows better than we, but to recall to our own minds the truth that He is the Author of all goodness and that we depend entirely on His bounty.¹² When we pray we do not mean to persuade God to change His eternal decrees; on the contrary, our prayers have entered into those decrees, as secondary causes, from all eternity.¹³

¹¹ Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 83, art. 2.—IDEM, Contra Gentiles, III, c. 95 sq.—V. Cathrein, S. J., Moralphilosophie, Vol. II, 4th ed., pp. 36 sq.

¹² Matt. VI, 8, 32.—St. Augustine, Serm., 56 (al. 48 de Divers.), c. 3, n. 4: “Lest perhaps someone say here: If [God] knows what is necessary for us, why do we say even a few words? Why do we pray? He Himself knows what He knows to be necessary for us. But for this reason He wished you to pray, that He might give to one who desires, lest what He gives be held cheap, because He Himself has inspired the desire itself.” (Migne, P. L., XXXVIII, 379).—IDEM, Epist., 130 (al. 121), n. 17: “What reason He does this, who knew what was necessary for us before we ask Him, can stir the mind, unless we understand that our Lord and God wishes our will, which He cannot be ignorant of, to become known to ourselves, but our desire, by which we may be able to receive what He prepares to give, to be exercised in prayers.”—IDEM, ibid., n. 18: “Hence also that which the Apostle says (Phil. IV, 6) is not so to be understood as though [our petitions] became known to God, who indeed knew them before they existed, but that through patience they should become known to us before God, not through boastfulness before men.” (P. L., XXXVIII, 500 sq.).—St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 83, art. 2, ad 1: “It is not necessary for us to address prayers to God so that we may manifest our needs or desires to Him, but so that we ourselves may consider that in these matters recourse must be had to divine aid.”—IDEM, ibid., ad 3: “God out of His liberality bestows many things upon us even when not asked, but He wills to bestow certain things upon us when we ask, and this is for our benefit, namely, that we may acquire a certain confidence in having recourse to God and that we may recognize Him as the author of our goods.”—Catech. Rom., P. IV, c. 2, qu. 7.

¹³ Matt. XXIV, 20.—Conc. Vatic., Sess. III, c. 1: “This one true God, by His goodness and almighty power . . . by a most free counsel, at once from the beginning of time fashioned out of nothing both creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . . . But all things which He created, God by His providence protects and governs, reaching mightily from end to end and ordering all things sweetly. For all things are naked and open to His eyes (Heb. IV, 13), even those which will come to pass by the free action of creatures.”—St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 83, art. 2: “By divine providence it is disposed not only which effects shall occur, but also from which causes and in what order they shall proceed. Now among the other causes the causes of certain things are human acts. Hence men must do certain things, not that by their acts they may change the divine disposition, but that by their acts they may fulfill certain effects according to the order arranged by God; and the same is also true in natural causes. And it is similar also regarding prayer; for we do not pray in order to change the divine disposition, but that we may obtain that which God disposed to be fulfilled through prayers.”

St. Thomas says: “All mistakes in this matter arise from failing to note the difference between the system of the universe and any particular system (universalem ordinem et particularem). There is nothing to hinder any particular system being changed, whether by prayer or by any other means; for there is that existing beyond the bounds of the system which is capable of changing it. But beyond the system that embraces all things nothing can be posited whereby such system could possibly be changed, depending as it does on the universal cause. Therefore the Stoics laid it down that the system established by God could nowise be changed. But they failed in a right appreciation of this general system in supposing that prayers were useless, which was taking for granted that the wills of men, and their desires whence their prayers proceed, are not comprehended in that general system. For when they say that the same effect follows whether prayers are put up or not,—follows, that is, as part of the universal system of things,—they manifestly reserve and except prayers as not entering into that general system. Supposing prayers included in the system, then effects will follow from them by divine appointment as from other causes. One might as well exclude the effects of other every-day causes as exclude the effect of prayer. And if the immutability of the divine plan does not withdraw the effects of other causes, neither does it take away the efficacy of prayer. Prayers, then, avail, not as changing a system arranged from eternity, but as being themselves part of that system. And there is no difficulty in the efficacy of prayer changing the particular system of some inferior cause, by the doing of God, who overpasses all causes, and who consequently is not bound by the necessity of any system depending on any cause; but, on the contrary, every necessity of system dependent on any inferior cause is checked by Him, as having been instituted by Him. Inasmuch, then, as pious prayers avail to alter some points of the system of inferior causes that was established by God, God is said to ‘turn’ or ‘repent.’ Hence St. Gregory says that God does not change His counsel, though He sometimes changes His sentence,—not the sentence which declares His eternal arrangements, but the sentence which declares the order of inferior causes, according to which Ezechias was to die, or some nation to be punished for its sins. Such change of sentence is called in metaphorical language ‘repentance,’ inasmuch as God behaves like one repentant, to whom it belongs to change what He has done. In the same way God is said metaphorically to be ‘angry,’ inasmuch as by punishing He produces the effect of anger.”¹⁴

¹⁴ Summa contra Gentiles, III, c. 96 (Rickaby, God and His Creatures, pp. 258 sq.). In the above passage, according to Fr. Jos. Rickaby, S.J., whose free translation we have adopted (God and His Creatures, London 1905, p. 259), St. Thomas admirably, though perhaps inadvertently, “hits off the real meaning of what he and Aristotle called ‘contingent’ in reference to a ‘particular system,’ but (apart from the doings of free will) every event is ‘necessary’ in the ‘general system,’ on the hypothesis of that system being. The killing of a sheep by lightning is a contingency unprovided for in the ovine economy, but pre-arranged in the general economy of the universe, in which general system it is an hypothetical necessity: it must be, if the system is to stand as it is.”

3. THE OBJECT OF PRAYER.—Whatever man may legitimately desire, he may also pray for. “It is permitted to pray for what it is permitted to desire.”¹⁵ The opinion that we are permitted only to pray in a general way that God’s “will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,” is contrary to Revelation. Both the Old and the New Testament, especially the Epistles of St. Paul, contain numerous instances of prayer offered for specific objects. Christ Himself prayed not only for the salvation of mankind in general, but for particular favors, of which the very prayer He taught His disciples enumerates no less than seven. St. Paul says: “Be nothing solicitous, but in every thing,¹⁶ by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your petitions¹⁷ be made known to God.”¹⁸

¹⁵ St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 83, art. 6.—St. Augustine, Serm., 56 (al. 48 de Div.), n. 2: “Many ask for what they ought not to ask, being ignorant of what is expedient for them. Therefore he who invokes must guard against two things: lest he ask for what he ought not, and lest he ask it from one from whom he ought not.”—IDEM, ibid., n. 4: “The words which our Lord Jesus Christ taught in the [Lord’s] Prayer are a form of desires. You are not permitted to ask for anything other than what is written there.” (Migne, P. L., XXXVIII, 378, 379).—IDEM, Epist., 130 (al. 121), n. 23: “Therefore let there at least be shame in asking for things which one is not ashamed to covet.” (P. L., XXXIII, 503).

¹⁶ ἐν παντί.

¹⁷ τὰ αἰτήματα ὑμῶν.

¹⁸ Phil. IV, 6; cfr. Matt. VI, 9 sqq.; Luke XXII, 32; XXIII, 34.—St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 83, art. 5.

a) Unconditionally we should pray for the supernatural graces of the moral order and for sanctification, i.e., eternal beatitude and whatever is required to attain it,—sufficient and efficacious grace, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the higher graces of the interior life. Conditionally we may pray for such favors and blessings as do not immediately serve the purpose of self-sanctification, e.g., the charismata, visions, miracles, revelations,—provided, namely, that the circumstances of the case are not such as to render our prayer a tentatio Dei. Conditionally we may and should also petition God for the good things of the natural order. The condition is that we do not desiderate these temporal blessings inordinately, i. e., for their own sake, but with due subordination to our supernatural destiny and the kingdom of God. A superabundance of temporal goods entails many temptations and dangers, and therefore, generally speaking, man should not desire or pray for wealth unless it is probable that he will employ it well, and even in that case he should exclude all inordinate desire by adding to his prayer the condition: “Provided it will help me to save my soul.”¹⁹

¹⁹ Prov. XXX, 8 sq.; Matt. VI, 33; XIII, 22; XXIV, 20; 1 Tim. VI, 8–10; Jas. IV, 3, 15; V, 17 sq.—Prop. Damnat. Mich. de Molinos, n. 14 sq. (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1234 sq.).

b) It is wrong and strictly forbidden to pray for anything that would surely prove detrimental to one’s own salvation or the salvation of others (mala ordinis moralis), e.g., for the withdrawal of some indispensable grace, or that some one might sin, even if it were only as a means of humiliation and reform.²⁰

²⁰ Cfr. Rom. III, 8; Gal. II, 17.—St. Augustine, Serm., 56 (al. 48 de Div.), n. 3: “In the holy Psalms you have read that the one who speaks in the Psalms seems to call down many evils upon his enemies. And indeed, someone says, the one who speaks in the Psalms is just; why, then, does he wish such evils upon his enemies? He does not wish them, but foresees them: it is the prophecy of one who foretells, not the desire of one who curses. For in the spirit they knew to whom evil was to happen and to whom good; and through prophecy they spoke as though they wished for what they foresaw. But you, how do you know whether the one upon whom you now call down evil will not become better than you? But I know that he is wicked, you say. And do you know that you are wicked? Although perhaps you dare to judge concerning another’s heart, which you do not know, yet you do know that you are wicked.” (Migne, P. L., XXXVIII, 378).

Evils of the natural order (mala physica), on the other hand, may be made the object of prayer in so far as they are licit means for the attainment of a higher end.

READINGS.—Bl. Albertus Magnus, Tract. de Forma Orandi, ed. A. Wimmer, Ratisbon 1902.—St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, P. V., c. 10 (ed. 2a, Vicetia, pp. 434 sqq.).—St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 83.—St. Alphonsus de’ Liguori, Prayer, the Great Means of Salvation, tr. by J. B. Coyle, C.SS.R., London 1922.—G. Tillmann, Das Gebet nach der Lehre der Heiligen, Vol. I, Freiburg 1874.—A. Stöckl, Das Christentum und die modernen Irrtümer, Mayence 1886, pp. 140 sqq.—J. B. Wirthmüller, Die moralische Tugend der Religion, pp. 31 sqq.—L. Lemme, Die Macht des Gebetes, Barmen 1887.—O. Lefranc, La Prière, Paris 1904.—I. M. L. Monsabré, La Prière. Paris 1906.—S. Schiffini, S.J., Tractatus de Virtutibus Infusis, pp. 574 sqq.—H. Noldin, S.J., Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. II, 11th ed., pp. 151 sq., 157 sqq.—Thos. Slater, S.J., A Manual of Moral Theology, Vol. I, pp. 209 sqq.—Ad. Tanquerey, Synopsis Theol. Mor. et Pastoral., Vol. II, pp. 497 sq., 505 sqq.—A. Lehmkuhl, S.J., Theol. Mor., Vol. I, 11th ed., pp. 269 sqq.—J. J. Wynne, S.J., in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, pp. 345 sqq.—Fisher, A Treatise on Prayer, London 1885.—Jos. Egger, S.J., Are Our Prayers Heard? London 1910.—Aug. Poulain, S.J., The Graces of Interior Prayer (tr. by L. Yorke Smith, 4th ed., London, s. a.).—Pohle-Preuss, Grace, Actual and Habitual, 5th ed., St. Louis 1924, pp. 43, 91, 127 sqq., 133, 142 sq., 266 sqq., 431, 433, 435.—C. Pesch, S.J., Praelectiones Dogmaticae, Vol. IX.