Motives of Confidence in Prayer
2nd Prel. Ask for a continual increase of faith, and confidence in prayer.
Point I. Motives of confidence on the part of God
CONSIDERATION. Want of confidence is one of the chief causes of the inefficacy of our prayers. And yet what powerful motives we have for confidence! Motives drawn from the thought of God, from the thought of ourselves, and from the thought of our neighbour, when we use intercessory prayer. On the part of God, let us remember that He is almighty, and consequently can grant all that we ask; He is omnipresent, and therefore can hear us everywhere, and knows even our most secret desires; He is our tender Father, and loves us more than we love ourselves. If we still have any doubts, they must surely be dispelled by those gracious words of our Divine Lord: “If you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it to you.”
APPLICATION. How is it that, whilst we acknowledge these truths, we pray ordinarily with so little confidence? We seem to cherish a kind of foreboding that our prayers will not be granted, or else to imagine some immense distance between God and ourselves, in which they will be lost before they reach Him. Or is it that we look on God only as a severe Judge alienated from us by our past sins and present infidelities? Let us examine ourselves carefully on these points, for often these motives of distrust are so hidden that they influence us without our being able to perceive it.
Pont II. Motives drawn from ourselves
CONSIDERATION. Our own helplessness and spiritual misery ought to inspire us with the greatest confidence, for God requires of us that we should aim at perfection, and we ourselves desire it; but we find ourselves powerless to attain it without His help and the constant succour of grace. Our Lord Himself teaches us this when He says, “Without Me you can do nothing.” But He also says, “Ask, and it shall be given you.” If it were not so, God would require an impossibility of us, which it would be absurd to suppose.
APPLICATION. We may draw a most consoling and encouraging conclusion from these considerations—namely, that the weaker we find ourselves, the more unable to rise from our sins and conquer our bad habits, the more right we have to trust in the efficacy of our prayers. This is self-evident, and yet have we not often acted as though the contrary were true? Have we not fallen into despair or discouragement after our falls? And when tepidity or disgust for spiritual things has taken possession of us, have we not left off praying, or lost all confidence in our prayers, as though God would not hear them? Let us acknowledge our errors, and be careful to avoid a repetition of them.
Point III. Motives drawn from our neighbour
CONSIDERATION. We have three powerful motives for confidence when we pray for others, especially for sinners, or for any who have been recommended to our prayers: 1st, that we are performing an act most pleasing to Almighty God; 2nd, that we are fulfilling a duty; 3rd, that it is a disinterested act of charity. We can pray with more boldness for another than for ourselves, and with more confidence in proportion to his need.
APPLICATION. When we look at the impiety and immorality which surround us, or on the apparent uselessness of our efforts to convert others, or save the souls confided to our care, are we not tempted to look upon them as incurable? Do we not feel inclined to leave off praying for them—to leave them to their fate? Far be such a thought from us; it is contrary to charity, and an insult to God.
~From Practical Meditations For Every Day of the Year on the Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ (first translated from the French in 1868)
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