Jesus says in Matthew 6:8 that the Father already knows our needs before we ask. In the very next verse he teaches the disciples the Lord's Prayer. On Catholic Answers Live, Joe Heschmeyer told a caller that this is the place to start. When we pray, we give God no new information. He already knows. So prayer must be for something other than informing him.
Heschmeyer's answer is that God's will is not only for certain things to happen. God wills for us to share in his life, and prayer is one way we do that. He points to Abraham in Genesis. After God chose Abraham, he told him his plan for Sodom and Gomorrah so that Abraham would intercede. The cities still fell, but Lot and his family were saved, and the next chapter says God remembered Abraham. Prayer can change things, Heschmeyer says, not for the worse but for the better. He adds James chapter five, where Elijah prayed and the rain stopped, then prayed again and it returned.
Jimmy Akin, also at Catholic Answers, puts it plainly: "Prayer is not about giving God information or changing his mind." God is changeless, Akin says, but that does not keep him from hearing the prayers we offer at a given moment and rewarding them, and he cites James 1:17. Prayer draws us out of ourselves. People build relationships by talking, so we talk to God. When we pray for others, we learn to care about them too. That, Akin notes, is how we live out the two great commandments of Mark 12:28-34.
Father Kenneth Doyle took the same question from a reader of The Catholic Virginian, who asked what good it does to pray for a relative to return to the Church or a friend to survive cancer. His answer: our prayers do not alter God's plan, they are factored into it. God has made some of what we desire contingent on our asking, so that we keep turning our hearts to him and admit our dependence. Doyle points to James 5:14-15 and Matthew 21:22, and grants that the link between God's plan and our prayers stays veiled in mystery until we meet the Lord.
So tomorrow morning, ask anyway, because Jesus told us to. Pray the Lord's Prayer slowly. Then name someone else's need before your own. That is prayer doing what God made it to do, drawing you closer to him and to your neighbor.
The caller on Catholic Answers Live, with host Cy Kellett, said he had only recently begun looking into religion and Catholicism. He pressed a second question: if God already sees the whole course of my life, is his will not already fixed? Heschmeyer answered that God is omniscient and knows what we will do, but knowing what someone will do is not the same as forcing them to do it. He pictured a person on a hill who sees two trains about to collide on a bad track. That person sees it all and causes none of it. Divine foreknowledge does not work just like that, he said, but God knows how we will freely respond to the prompts he gives, and when prayer brings a result, that is the divine will unfolding.
The caller also asked about something small, such as praying for a good test grade. Heschmeyer said God wants our growth and spiritual success even more than any outcome, so he often rewards prayer because praying itself is a good he wants to encourage. Father Doyle adds one more passage, Mark 9:29, where Jesus tells his disciples that a certain kind of spirit comes out only through prayer. And Heschmeyer told the caller it is normal for the question to feel daunting at first.
Scripture: Matthew 6:8-13, James 5:16, James 1:17, Mark 12:28-34, James 5:14-15, Matthew 21:22
