Does Prayer Really Make a Difference?

This season that we are in has many of us getting down on our knees, pleading God for one thing or another. We’ve been praying for an end to the pandemic, the development of a vaccine, healing of those infected, employment for those who have lost their jobs, and many other needs. Days have turned into weeks and weeks into months, yet many uncertainties are still hovering over us making it very tempting to ask, “Does prayer really make a difference?” It also doesn’t help to be living in a highly secular world where ‘thoughts and prayers’ are considered nothing more than a trite platitude; “How can you waste time praying when there is so much work that needs to be done?” So where and how does prayer fit in the grand scheme of things?

The saints placed great value on prayer and attributed the many things that they accomplished to graces that came from prayer. St. Teresa of Calcutta is well known for her insistence of a daily Holy Hour. She said, “I know I would not be able to work one week if it were not for that continual force coming from Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.” St. Francis de Sales, on the other hand, had this to say to the busy bees, “Every one of us needs half an hour of prayer each day, except when we are busy – then we need an hour.” Looking at the lives of many saints, it is perfectly clear that prayer did something good in their lives and the lives of those they ministered to.

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But what exactly does prayer do? One thing for sure is that prayer does not change God. God is all-knowing and all-powerful. He already knows what we think and want, and he doesn’t need any input from us as he already has a plan that is perfect. However, he awaits our petitions because the dignity of his children lies in their freedom. We must pray, then, with his Spirit of freedom, to be able truly to know what he wants. (CCC 2736) And therein lies how prayer makes a difference, something which many theologians have spoken at length about. However, it does not exactly make for leisure reading, so we will not go into that now, but consider this analogy to better understand how prayer works:

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.  

It is safe to say that while prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us, and we go on to change things according to God’s perfect divine plan. Prayer is not optional, it is like air, water, food and sleep, it is necessary to sustain life within us. The most beautiful thing about prayer is that it is a gift from God. How so? It is easy to succumb to the belief that prayer is something that we start, but the truth is, it is always God who initiates prayer. What we do is merely respond to his invitation. Each time we sit down to pray, the Lord is already there waiting for us. And the primary end of prayer is to build a relationship with God.

So yes, while there is much work to be done – the hungry must be fed, the naked clothed, the prisoner visited, the sick nursed – merely doing these tasks makes it nothing more than blind activism. With prayer, we become collaborators in God’s work. When we pray, God stirs our heart to work with him in making his divine plan a reality; a plan that aims to bring all his children to heaven with him for all eternity. When we look at prayer in light of God’s plan, much of why we do it makes sense. As for the rest, we will find out when we come face to face with him in heaven. KA

Excerpts from https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/does-prayer-change-things/5844/