“Whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” John 14:13

27 April 2024   John 14:7-14

“If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14). This promise seems obviously false.

Many, many people, thousands, millions, billions have asked Jesus for something that they never got. They asked for it in His name. They asked for good things, righteous things, and they never happened. We Catholics end all our prayers, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.” No Catholic alive would ever say that Jesus has done every single thing they asked. People have still died, jobs were still lost, children have still not come back to Church.

This promise seems obviously false.

It seems false because almost everyone lacks a grown-up understanding of prayer.

Prayer is hard. Really hard. That is why the most basic form of prayer is to say the same thing over and over again. We repeat the same thing again and again because the most difficult feature of prayer is that our minds tend to wander – to our work, our to-do list, the entertainment we plan for the evening, the conversation we had at lunch yesterday. If we say our prayers out loud, over and over, that has a tendency to call us back to what we were supposed to be doing in the first place. One of the most common themes in the lives of the saints is that they have great difficulty concentrating in prayer – they can’t always keep their attention focused on Jesus. That is why prayers like the rosary work. They give us a way, over time, to control our wandering thoughts. Most people never get past this point. That is not to say that they have failed – to control your wandering thoughts is a bigsuccess even if you do it just half the time.

But the life of prayer goes further. Much further.

The mystics write often about the Prayer of Silence, where they are absorbed, as it were, into the Mind and Will of God. Some people think they can start with the prayer of silence, try it out like they test drive a car. That is kind of like saying that, with no language study at all, you are going to speak Arabic all morning. It doesn’t work that way. To be absorbed into the Mind and Will of God means first that you must know the Mind and Will of God, which generally requires years of faithful and serious study of the Bible, including long conversations with people who know the Bible very well. It means spending many, many long hours daily literally “saying your prayers,” speaking them out loud, and controlling the tendency of your mind to wander. It means making the Mind and Will of God your primary purpose every day, year after year. And only then are you capable of the Prayer of Silence for short periods of time. There is a reason why most of the people who are able to do this are monks and nuns. They know the struggle of really praying and have made it their vocation to pray as deeply as possible. This is not to say that people who are not called to the religious life are incapable of the Prayer of Silence. It is only to say how much effort and focus it takes, and that it is definitely not a place where people can begin.

Most people never get to that place. There is nothing wrong with that. If prayers like the rosary teach people over time how to control their errant thoughts some of the time, that is a significant spiritual victory, and gladdens the heart of God. Prayer that is always answered, however, is always in accord with everything the name of Jesus stands for, proceeds from faith in Christ, and leads to oneness with Christ, and has only one objective, viz., to glorify Christ. It is the work of lifetimes, not just hours or even years.

Perhaps you are called to that life. Buckle up and simmer down. It is going to be a long and demanding ride. In the meantime, say your prayers. Jesus hears them all, even if you don’t get the answer you want.