The Many Ways Prayer Is Heard

The words of the gospels and of the prophets teach us that there are different reasons why prayer is heard, according to the varied and changing condition of souls. Our Lord’s words point out the fruit of an answer when two people agree, as it is said: “If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven.” You have another in fullness of faith, which is compared to a grain of mustard seed. “For,” he says, “if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Be removed,’ and it will be removed, and nothing will be impossible for you.” You have it in perseverance in prayer, which the Lord’s words call persistence, because it keeps on asking without tiring: “For truly I tell you, even if he will not get up because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs.” You have it in the fruit of almsgiving: “Shut up alms in the heart of the poor, and it will pray for you in the time of trouble.” You have it in purifying one’s life and in works of mercy, as it is said: “Loose the bands of wickedness; undo the bundles that oppress.” Then, after a few words rebuking the barrenness of a fruitless fast, he says, “Then you will call, and the Lord will hear you; you will cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’” Sometimes, too, the very weight of trouble makes a prayer heard, as it is said: “When I was in trouble I called to the Lord, and he heard me.” And again: “Do not afflict the stranger, for if he cries to me, I will hear him, for I am merciful.” [a]

So you see in how many ways the gift of an answer may be obtained, so that no one need be crushed by despair over his conscience when he seeks the things that bring salvation and last forever. Suppose that, looking at our wretchedness, I admit that we are utterly without all the virtues we have just mentioned: we have neither that praiseworthy agreement of two people, nor the faith that is compared to a grain of mustard seed, nor the works of piety the prophet describes. Surely we cannot be without the persistence that he supplies to all who want it. On account of that alone the Lord promises to give whatever he has been asked to give. So we ought to persevere without unbelieving hesitation, and not have the least doubt that by continuing in our prayers we will obtain everything we have asked for in keeping with the mind of God. For the Lord, in his desire to grant what is heavenly and eternal, urges us to compel him, as it were, by our persistence. He not only does not despise or reject the persistent, but actually welcomes and praises them, and most graciously promises to grant whatever they have hoped for with perseverance. He says, “Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” And again: “Whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive, and nothing will be impossible for you.” So even if all the grounds for being heard that we have mentioned are wholly lacking, at least earnest persistence may stir us up, since this lies in the power of anyone who is willing, without the hardship of any merits or labors. But let no one who prays doubt this: he certainly will not be heard as long as he doubts whether he is heard.

We are taught by the example of the blessed Daniel that this too must be sought from the Lord without tiring. Though he was heard from the first day he began to pray, he obtained what he asked for only after twenty-one days. So we too ought not to grow slack in the earnest prayers we have begun if we think the answer is slow in coming. Perhaps the gift of the answer is being delayed in God’s providence. Or perhaps the angel who was to bring the divine blessing to us, as he comes out from the presence of the Almighty, is hindered by the resistance of the devil; and it is certain that he cannot bring us the gift we long for if he finds that we have slackened in the earnestness of our request. This would certainly have happened to the prophet we just mentioned, had he not kept on and persevered in his prayers with incomparable steadfastness until the twenty-first day. So let us not be cast down at all by despair from the confidence of this faith of ours, even when we think we are far from having received what we prayed for. And let us have no doubts about the Lord’s promise, where he says, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”

For we do well to consider this saying of the blessed evangelist John, which clearly settles the uncertainty of this question: “This,” he says, “is the confidence we have in him, that whatever we ask according to his will, he hears us.” So he bids us have a full and undoubting confidence of an answer only in those things that are not for our own advantage or for comfort in this present time, but agree with the Lord’s will. We are also taught to put this into our prayers by the Lord’s Prayer, where we say, “Your will be done”: yours, not ours. For if we also remember the apostle’s words, that “we do not know what to pray for as we ought,” we will see that we sometimes ask for things opposed to our salvation, and that our requests are most providentially refused by him who sees what is good for us more rightly and truly than we can. It is clear that this happened to the teacher of the Gentiles too, when he prayed that the messenger of Satan might be removed, who had been allowed by the Lord’s will to strike him for his good. He says, “Three times I begged the Lord about this, that he might leave me. And he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for strength is made perfect in weakness.’”

Our Lord too expressed this feeling when he prayed in the person of the man he had taken on, so that by his example he might give us a pattern of prayer, as he did in other things also. He said, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will.” Yet his will was certainly not at odds with his Father’s will, for “he had come to save what was lost and to give his life as a ransom for many.” As he himself says, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” Speaking in that same person, the blessed David sings in the thirty-ninth Psalm of the oneness of will that the Son always kept with the Father: “To do your will, O my God, I am willing.” For even if we read of the Father, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” we find no less of the Son, “who gave himself for our sins.” And as it is said of the one, “who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,” so it is written of the other, “He was offered because he himself willed it.” So it is shown that the will of the Father and of the Son is one in all things, so that even in the very mystery of the Lord’s resurrection we are taught there was no discord in their working. Just as the blessed apostle declares that the Father brought about the resurrection of his body, saying, “And God the Father, who raised him from the dead,” so the Son also testifies that he himself will raise again the temple of his body, saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”

So, taught by all these examples of our Lord that we have listed, we too ought to end our requests with the same prayer, and always add this clause to all our petitions: “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” But it is clear enough that one who does not pray with attention of mind cannot keep the threefold bow that is usually made in the assemblies of the brothers at the close of the service.