p. 4Why We Should Pray

Prayer is a strict obligation for every man. It is a sacred and indispensable duty which every man owes to God and to himself. Many and most weighty are the reasons for this.

I. Man Is a Creature of God. All men have been made by God and are, therefore, wholly dependent on Him for their very being and existence, for all that they have, for all that they are. God, being our Creator, is our Sovereign Lord and Master, and we, therefore, belong entirely to Him. He is the One infinitely perfect Being, upon whom all other beings depend. God is infinitely great and powerful, infinitely good, holy, wise and just. Our dependence on God is so entire and complete, that, without His constantly preserving hand, we could not exist even for a moment, but should of ourselves at once relapse into nothingness. As our Creator, as the Creator and Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, as the infinitely perfect Being, as our God, He possesses the inalienable right and claim to our profoundest homage, reverence, adoration and submission; as our Father, He deserves all our respect, honor, obedience, confidence and love. He is so great, so perfect, so exalted, that it is for us the highest honor, the greatest proof of nobility to serve Him, to obey Him, to humbly acknowledge our entire and absolute dependence upon Him, and to be permitted to call Him our Father and to manifest to Him our love and confidence. Wherefore the Church does not hesitate to chant: “To serve God is to reign.” To be His humble and faithful servants, to obey and love Him as our most loving Father is a far greater distinction and honor than to be the sovereign ruler and monarch of the whole world. Rulers of countries, of nations, as we learn from history, are not unfrequently abject slaves of worldly allurements, of human respect, of the desire for popularity and even of base passions. But the humble and faithful servant of God is the noble and glorious conqueror and master of himself; he rules over his passions, over mere human views and human respect, over the world and its allurements and vanities; he is, therefore, free and independent of all that is below him, and enjoys the true liberty of the children of God, which consists in being wholly subject to the authority of God, from whom alone all genuine power and authority on earth are derived, as St. Paul teaches: “There is no power but from God” (Rom. 13. 1). To own our total dependence on God and His absolute authority over us, and to declare this to Him is prayer, for it is giving to God the honor due to His Sovereign Majesty.

II. God Is the First and Greatest p. 5Benefactor of Every Man. Without any merit or claim on our part, God has given us our body with its wonderful organs and senses, our immortal soul with its supersensible faculties, understanding, free will and memory, to distinguish us from irrational beings, to render us almost equal to the angels and make us even the image of Himself. Every moment of our life, everything we are and have is His gift. From how many dangers, sufferings and trials has He preserved us, and how many of them has He enabled us to bear or derive profit from! In fact, we could almost as easily count the grains of sand on the sea-shore as the temporal gifts and favors He has bestowed upon us. He has, moreover, destined us after this life to reign with Him in heaven as His heirs and there to share His own happiness forever. And to enable us to secure this glorious destiny, He sent His own Divine Son on earth to become man and die for us on the cross. And Jesus Christ, the Son of God shed all His blood and died on the cross to save us. And did He not, besides, found His Church, endow her with the Sacraments, with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and with every necessary means to enable us to save our souls and merit heaven? And His love for us went even so far as to make His own Mother our own spiritual Mother to care for us, to assist us with her all-powerful mediation to overcome all obstacles on our way to heaven. And how often has not the Son of God imparted to us the graces necessary to overcome temptations, to keep the divine commandments and to lead a virtuous life? It may be truly said that every moment of our life has been marked by God’s benefits to enable us to avoid, to expiate sin and escape its eternal punishment, and to secure in heaven the happiness destined to the beloved children of God. And all these countless inestimable gifts, favors and helps have been conferred on us without any merit on our part, and even notwithstanding our unworthiness, our sinfulness. Wherefore, God is the most liberal of benefactors and our most loving Father, and it is our sacred and indispensable duty to show Him our gratitude by frequently, nay, even daily, offering Him our most sincere and heartfelt thanks. To do this is prayer.

III. Every Man Is a Sinner and Is, Therefore, Bound to Implore God’s Mercy and Forgiveness. God, as we have just learned, is our greatest Benefactor and most loving Father. But how do we requite His countless benefits and most tender love? The greater His benefits and the more tender His love, the greater also is man’s ingratitude, for he fears not to offend Him, to despise His commandments, His wishes, His entreaties, and daily outrage Him by neglecting or abusing the means of salvation God so bountifully bestows upon him. Every one of us is a sinner, for the beloved disciple says: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. . . . p. 6If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and His word is not in us” (I John 1. 8, 10). In fact, how often have we not transgressed the commandments of God in thought, in word, in deed and omission? Has there been even one day in our life, that was not marked by one or more sins, and even by some grievous sin? We all desire to go to heaven, but what have we done to deserve it? Or rather, have we not done much to lose heaven and deserve the punishment of hell? What would have become of us, had we died on such and such a day, in such and such a place, after yielding to temptation, after gratifying our passion? Are we not like the servant who owed his lord the immense sum of ten thousand talents, and had not wherewith to pay him even a small part of that sum? Have we any excuse to offer for our failure to pay our debt, or any security to give for its payment? What will become of us, if we fail to satisfy the claims, the rights of God’s justice? Have we any means of escaping the just punishment of our sins? Yes, thanks to the Divine Goodness, we have. We have only to address to God a prayer for mercy and forgiveness, a prayer, that is the outcome of sincere sorrow for sin, joined to the firm resolution to sin no more, and to fulfil the condition requisite to obtain forgiveness, that is, to go to confession. Hence the necessity of prayer.

IV. No Man Is Self-Sufficient; God’s Help Is Indispensable to Every Man. The Rev. Alban Stolz, a holy priest, the author of many good, popular and practical books, relates that one day, whilst taking a much needed recreation in a country-place, he passed alongside a beautiful farm, in which an abundant crop of the finest cereals was approaching maturity. He tarried quite a while to admire the splendid sight. When in the meantime the owner of the farm came along, the priest expressed his admiration of the fine promising crop and remarked: “What a fine crop you have! You ought to thank God for blessing you with such a crop.” “What!” exclaimed the farmer; “I do not see why I should thank God for it, since it is all owing to my hard work and to plenty of good fertilizers.” The following year the good priest returned to the same place for a few weeks’ rest; and one day he took a stroll to the same farm. But what a change was there! All the neighboring farms gave promise of exceptionally fine crops, but the farm he had so much admired the year before, was now mostly a parched, barren waste, and the thin spare ears of wheat appeared so wretched and poor as not to be worth the gathering. This time also he met the farmer and questioned him about his crop. In doleful tones the farmer bewailed his exceedingly bad luck, as he expressed it. “But,” asked the priest, “did you not work hard and use plenty of good fertilizers?” “Yes,” replied the farmer, “but in spite of this, I have the poorest crop I have ever seen. I do not know to what to attribute my p. 7bad luck and the good luck of my neighbors, who have not worked half as hard as I did.” “If you do not know,” said the priest, “I will tell you. You may work as hard and as long as you can, you may, besides, use all the best fertilizers in the world, if you lack the blessing of God, you shall never succeed. This year you had not God’s blessing, because last year you denied that you owed your splendid crop to His blessing, and claimed it as the result of your work and the use of fertilizers. Remember the words of the psalmist: ‘Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it’ (Ps. 126. 1). Henceforth never lose sight of the fact that you stand in need of God, of His blessing in all you do, if you wish to succeed.” This little anecdote teaches us the very important lesson that without God we are helpless.

In fact, what are we? Of ourselves we are poor and as weak and as helpless as infants, and this especially in the supernatural order, in all that pertains to our salvation. Recall to mind what you have read in Chapter I, that we can do nothing for our salvation without the assistance of Jesus Christ; without the grace of the Holy Ghost we cannot have even a holy and meritorious thought, nor can we call upon God to help us, to be a Father to us. “God,” says St. Paul, “hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father” (Gal. 4. 6). Divine grace, that is, God’s help, is absolutely necessary for us in all that concerns our salvation. To be saved, we are required to keep the commandments, but this we can do only with the assistance of divine grace; and to obtain it, it behooves us to pray to God for it. The Council of Trent, adopting the saying of St. Augustine, says: “God in commanding us to do what we are not able to accomplish of ourselves, admonishes us to do all we can of ourselves and to pray to Him for help to do what is beyond our power, and when we so pray, He imparts to us the grace to accomplish it.” This, together with what has already been said in III, shows us the absolute necessity of the prayer of petition, as the prayer or supplication for God’s help is usually called. Wherefore we are strictly obliged to pray for God’s assistance in all that pertains to our salvation, and as we shall see further on, we should do so in our temporal needs, though under certain conditions. As we daily need the divine assistance in both spiritual and temporal wants, it behooves us to pray daily, and even many times daily to repeat: “I am needy and poor; O God, help me” (Ps. 69. 6).