Dom Hubert van Zeller: THE PRAYER OF PETITION (We Die Standing Up)

Dom Hubert van Zeller: THE PRAYER OF PETITION (We Die Standing Up)

It is very easy to become snobbish in prayer and look down upon asking God for things. St. Thomas gives the lie to this attitude of mind when he defines prayer as "an activity of the practical intellect chiefly consisting in petition". He is not talking here of contemplation, nor is there any discussion as to what is the highest form that prayer can take. He is merely saying that when you get down to it prayer is asking. And when you think of it—as when you think of most of St. Thomas's startling statements—it must be. Prayer is the human mind looking for something in the direction where it knows that something to be. Even if the soul is only exposing its miseries there is the implied cry for help. And this is asking. If it is expressing sorrow for sin there is the implied cry for pardon. Gratitude and praise are perhaps the most selfless forms of prayer, but even here we are asking God to listen.

Another form of snobbishness in prayer is shown in the idea that when asking for things we are necessarily displaying too much activity for the requirements of pure prayer. This is of course sheer rubbish. For one thing the activity of suffering, or delighting, or sneezing, doesn't interfere with pure prayer, so why should praying? For another thing, except in the case of certain supernatural states of prayer, activity of some sort is essential. Read again the definition of St. Thomas quoted above. The same saint, in another place, calls prayer "an activity of the virtue of religion". It is bustle, not activity, that militates against the serenity required for interior prayer, and then only the kind of bustle that is admitted in the will. If all operation were to cease there would be no response to the action of grace, there would be no expression of the virtue of religion. The very word "ex-pression" connotes a going out, a pro-pulsion towards something.

Not only is prayer an activity of religion but it is, because it regards God directly, the best act. It is higher than the act of charity towards one's neighbor because it is the expression of one's charity towards Cod. Consequently, any act performed prayerfully—whether related to one of the virtues or not—becomes an act of virtue. Recreations, undertakings, human relationships—not to mention the more obvious things like sufferings, misunderstandings, loneliness and doubt— acquire a sacred character under the cover of prayer. Caussade's illuminating phrase "the sacrament of the present moment" means precisely this. The human will directed towards God, recognizing its dependence upon Cod, intent upon performing all that the perfect service of God involves . . . this, although it be wordless, is the attitude of mind which we associate with perfect prayer. And who would say that petition was not compatible with such a disposition?

Unless the place of petition is allowed and even assured in all but the purely passive and extraordinary prayers there is the danger of divorcing prayer from life. The mistake is common enough of thinking that prayer is a thing apart, a sanctifying exercise to be tacked on to everyday existence but in no way related to the course and character of every happening. The function of prayer is not primarily to help in the ordering of our lives. Its primary function is to give glory to Cod. But the more it is part of our lives the better.

There is this also to be considered, that where other activities of religion may express one or other of its virtues, prayer —in its most generous form at any rate—expresses them all. To service, to justice, to penance there is in prayer the added and all blessed quality of love. Who ever heard of a love that was too proud to ask?

The saints? Did they ask for things from God? Certainly, they did, that is why people asked them for their prayers. That is why we ask them now to pray whenever we want anything. Ah, you will say, but that is different: they may have asked on behalf of others but surely it is unworthy to think of them as asking for what they themselves wanted. Not at all. They asked for what they wanted most, but then what they wanted most was not what we want most: they asked for Cod's will. They hungered for more and more and more of God.

And what is more, they got what they wanted. Following their lead and the Gospel injunction we can, in our prayer, do worse than "seek first the Kingdom of God", and we shall find that all these things which we ask for shall be added to us. All these things? Why not, if they are things which are to our soul's health?

"Ask of the gods," says Socrates, "only for good things." This is sound enough as far as it goes. Christ goes farther than Socrates. "Ask for anything in my name," says Christ, "and it shall be given to you." Anything. But particularly for the Father's will. Anyway ask.