Why Aren't All Prayers Answered?

Introduction. One of the stumbling blocks people encounter in their prayer life is unanswered prayers. It bothers a lot of people who have been praying for a long time and nothing happens, and they begin to have doubts. Their faith is sometimes shaken. Is it true what Jesus says in the Gospel: "Ask and you shall receive”? They wonder: is it true that all prayers are answered? My answer is: Yes and No. I can't lose. I have it both ways!

There are some conditions precisely for prayers to be answered. There are conditions on the part of God; there are conditions on the part of the one who prays, and, if we pray for a 3rd party, somebody else, there are also conditions on the part of that person.

On the part of God, we already know that what we ask for must be in accord with his will. We do not pray to change the will of God, but to enter into his plan, to cooperate with him. You know, it is like he's there ready to pour his blessings upon us, and prayer is just opening our hands and hearts to him, in the attitude of a beggar. That's the right attitude of a creature as we are facing God. We have to ask. We are beggars. And so we are there to receive what he wants to give us.

And, you know, I told you yesterday, God wants to give us everything that is good. That's why we can pray for so many things, confident that if it's God's plan for our salvation, and for our spiritual good, and even for the temporal things we need to do our work, he will answer, he will say yes.

We must always keep in mind that praying is precisely and just that: praying. It's not demanding. We don't demand anything of God. We humbly ask him. That's petition, prayer. We don't do any arm-twisting as I told you yesterday, because we believe and we know that God is on our side. We don't have to pressure him into giving us what we want. Everything good, he is willing to give it to us, that is what he sees is for our good.

You know, we don't always realize what is good for us. Suppose I pray to win the megabucks, to make a million dollars in the sweepstakes. God may see it's not good for us. You know, when people have a lot of money, it happens so often that they forget God. And so, God, who knows the future, knows our inner dispositions better than we do, may well say: "No, it's not good for you. It's not the loving thing for me to grant you that."

Sometimes people ask for the most absurd things. I've seen a person in love with a divorced woman, or a woman in love with a divorced man, asking me to pray that she may marry him. That's going against the will of God. She wants to do something sinful. How can we think of praying for that? God cannot answer a prayer like that! Yet people have asked that of me. That the other person may love me and want to marry me! They just don't think!

God's plans are always good and often unexpected. We don't know the ways of God. We don't know why he does things. I'll give you a few interesting examples.

You remember the story of Lazarus in the Gospel, the brother of Martha and Mary. Lazarus was very sick, on the point of death. Martha sent a friend to tell Jesus who was not nearby then, that his friend was very ill. Jesus said O.K. But he stayed where he was for two more days. After two days, he told the Apostles: "Let us go. Our friend Lazarus is dead." He knew. He let him die, and then, he had to make the miracle of the resurrection: he raised Lazarus back to life. Humanly speaking, we say: Why didn't he heal him when he was sick and not let him die, rather than let him die and then having to raise him back to life? In our way of thinking, it doesn't make much sense, does it? But Jesus said it was that the glory of God may be manifested by this great miracle. Mary came to believe in Jesus who would not have believed otherwise. It was a greater miracle to raise him up, and Jesus knew what he was going to do. It was a greater miracle to raise a dead to life than to heal a sick man.

You see, God has reasons we don't know, and when God doesn't answer our prayers we have every reason to suppose that he has good reasons, but we can't think of these because we don't know. However, we trust God because we know he loves us. That's the foundation of our prayer life. We know God loves us, we believe in him, and we pray with confidence that he will do what is best.

One good reason why God sometimes - and very often, perhaps - defers, puts off granting what we request, is that if he answered our prayers immediately every time, if that were his ordinary practice - we ask for something, we've got it almost right away - we would probably come to think that we control God, that he is our servant, we've got him at our finger tips: we've just got to snap our fingers and he acts. God is not like that. We cannot treat him like that. We must humbly beg of him, and that's why he wants us to believe in him, no matter what. He wants us to make an act of faith and to grow in that faith. And so, he puts us off, grants us his favors sometimes much later, so that we will recognize our dependence on him. We are his servants, not the other way round. And our faith in God grows when we pray with perseverance, believing, even if we don't see the results immediately.

We might also note that God wants us to experience our helplessness at times, and keep us very humble, and teach us how much we need him. You know how St. Paul experienced that, one day, in a marvelous way. He was praying to God, begging him three times, he tells us, to take away what he calls "a thorn in the flesh." I don't know if it's a physical illness he had, or pain, or whatever, but he calls it a thorn in the flesh. He begged the Lord three times to take it away. What did the Lord do? He let him struggle with it. He said: "My grace is sufficient for you." I'm going to help you to cope with that problem instead of taking it away, and thereby I will show you the power of my grace. "My power is made perfect in your weakness." It is manifested in you. God is glorified thereby. Instead of having an easy victory by taking away our problems, God makes us struggle and achieve victory with the help of his grace. And this is good for us. It's a victory we gain and it shows us the power of God's grace.

Now some conditions on the part of the one who prays. I would like to dispel a wrong idea some people have about prayer. When people have been praying a long time and nothing has happened, they often come to me and say: Gee, I don't know, I think I'm not praying right, I'm not saying the right prayers. Father, could you help me? Or, maybe I'm not praying to the right saint; I'm not making the right novena; and they want me to tell them how they should pray, what they should say, or to what saint to turn.

My answer is that there is no such thing as a right prayer. There is no such thing as having to pray to this saint or that. They're all good. And there is no obligation to go to one or the other. If your devotion leads you to such a one, then he has power to help you. If you pray to another saint without any faith, he has no power. You're cutting off his wings, his power.

The one thing that matters is to pray with faith and love in your heart. It's not the words you use, or maybe the saint you pray to. All that is secondary. Some people put too much trust in this or that novena, "a powerful novena," "a miraculous novena," things like that. I'm not impressed by those things. I really am not. It's not the prayer you say; it's what you have in your heart: the faith and the love of God. That's what makes any prayer good.

The value of a particular prayer you say is if it inspires in you that kind of faith in your heart. That's what makes a prayer good, if it happens to inspire you and. awakens the love of God in your heart. That is what makes a particular prayer good "for you." It may be good for you, and maybe it doesn't inspire "me." That's very personal. What is important is that I pray with faith and love in my heart. That's what makes a good prayer. Anything else is superstition. Let's be honest about it. If you attach a magic value to a particular prayer, a particular novena, a particular statue...often times people call that statue of St. Anne there a miraculous statue. I have no problem with that, but I have to understand there is no miraculous power in the statue. It's the people who have come to pray with faith...they, by their faith, have obtained miracles by praying through the intercession of St. Anne. In religion, brothers and sisters, nothing works like magic. It's a matter of faith. It's something in our heart.

Now, let us look at certain dispositions in us that can account for unanswered prayers:

Praying carelessly, mechanically, more or less. How often do we catch ourselves and are surprised to realize that we're just saying "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" and not thinking of what we are saying? Jesus says in the Gospel: "Do not rattle on like pagans." (Mt 6:7) Better to say one decade of the Rosary with devotion, thinking of what you are saying, than the full Rosary and just rattling on Our Fathers and Hail Marys. Prayer is something real. Prayer is talking to someone...you've got an audience in heaven. When you go and talk with a friend, what would that friend think if you rattled off in a monotone: "Hello, my friend, how are you? I'm glad to sees you. How have you been since the last time we met?” It's ridiculous, isn't it? And to think that we sometimes pray like that! Oh, my, God must have a sense of humor! He knows we don't mean any harm. But this is not praying. This is just rattling on words, the very thing Jesus said in the Gospel we shouldn't do. Mean what you say. Otherwise, prayer is just empty words.

Now, if you have a special need to pray a lot, and you decide to pray the whole Rosary... I'm afraid you will be tempted to rattle it off. Just say: I'm going to say it more slowly, more devoutly, I will put my heart into it. That's the way to pray with greater intensity, if that's what you want because you have a special need.

Another reason why we do not obtain what we pray for is if we live in a state of sin and do not sincerely try to overcome our bad habits. Why then should God hear our prayers? If we make no effort to live in his love, if we keep offending him. It doesn't make sense. If you're hurting me all the time and you ask me a favor, forget it! I'm not inclined to respond to that. If we live in a state of sin and we're not trying to change...oh, if we're struggling with sin, making a serious effort, and we keep trying, we are proving to God that we love him in spite of our weakness. He will answer our prayers if we really are making an effort to live in his love, no matter how weak we are. He has compassion for the sick and for sinners who are weak, who are struggling, trying to be good, though not always succeeding. What I am talking about here is those who don't care, who don't make any real honest effort to avoid sin.

A common hindrance to obtaining God's favors, especially healing, something we find a lot in the healing ministry - a common obstacle is when we hold grudges against somebody, when we have not forgiven someone who hurt us. Even if he is still hurting us, the Lord wants us to forgive and, if we don't, we have a serious obstacle to obtaining God's favors. Believe me, I see it a lot in the healing ministry. You have to learn to forgive, like Jesus on the cross. He forgave those who nailed him to the cross. And he taught us to pray every day: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." He will do with us as we do with others. So, be forgiving. And if you find it hard to forgive, ask Jesus to help you and he will. "Pray for those who persecute you," he said. Pray for your enemies. It will be a sign that you really want to forgive. Even if you still have hurts, it doesn't mean that you have not forgiven. To forgive is a decision of the will. You decide to forgive by making a free decision, a free choice.

Finally, if we don't pray with faith, we don't really believe that much in God, our prayers won't be worth very much. We won't get very much from God. We're just taking a chance on God. Forget it!

Finally, there is a condition on the part of those we pray for. When we pray for ourselves, for our personal needs, we can take it for granted that we are well disposed to receive God's blessings, his favors. But if we pray for somebody else, that person is free to be open and receptive to God or closed, and a lot of people are not ready to open up to God. That's why God pours the water of grace upon them but it just runs off. God made us free and he doesn't force anybody to be good. That's why we are never sure that when we pray for somebody else, especially somebody's conversion, that he or she will in fact be converted.

But what we know for sure: if we pray sincerely, God will pour his grace upon that person. That's what happened with St. Monica when she prayed over 18 years for the conversion of her son, Augustine.

What I'm saying here is that even if we're not sure that somebody else will take advantage of the graces poured upon him because of our prayers, we should keep praying and hoping that some day, perhaps, that person will be touched so strongly that he or she will be open to receive that grace of conversion. As I said, that happened to St. Augustine. For 18 years Monica, his mother, prayed and prayed and prayed, and never gave up.

And you know, all those graces that the Lord poured on Augustine during those years, which he rejected constantly, which he did not accept then, they nevertheless left a mark on his soul and at some point, when the circumstances were right for him, spiritually and psychologically, he said, “Yes, Lord.” At one point he had said: "Lord, give me chastity, but not right now." He was not yet ready to change his ways. But when the moment was right, he opened his eyes and said: Yes. He accepted the Lord and became a great saint.

So, don't get discouraged. If I say that we have no guarantee that praying for others will obtain results, nevertheless, we can hope for it and keep praying. And if we do, there is no doubt that God will come to that person because of our prayers, touching him, leaving a mark on his soul, and some day, hopefully, you will see that person change. So, don't give up praying!

Conclusion. All good prayers are answered if they are in accordance with God's will. And if he doesn't give us exactly what we ask for, he will give us what we need. I would like to end this talk by reading a beautiful prayer found in the pocket of an unknown Confederate soldier who died on the battlefield during the Civil War. It brings out beautifully what I am saying.

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve,
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health, that I might do greater things,
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy,
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men,
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life,
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for,
But everything that I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered,
I am among all men most richly blessed.

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