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Prayer — what we offer

What prayer is

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  1. Which of these best describes what prayer is?

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    Answer ③ Raising the heart to God and asking him for what is good

    Prayer is the raising of the heart toward God, and asking is part of that, not something outside it. The first shrinks prayer to the reciting of a formula, the second to an exercise in emptying the mind, and the fourth to a technique for talking God round.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church 2558-2559

  2. In prayer, who moves first?

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    Answer ④ God does — he calls first, and the person answers that call

    Prayer is not a conversation we open; it is the answer to a call. At the well it was Jesus who asked for a drink first, and the thirst is always God's before it is ours. The first three take prayer to be something that starts in a human need or a human knack.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church 2560, 2567

  3. Humility is the foundation of prayer.

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    Answer ① Yes

    Yes. We stand before God as people who do not even know how to pray as we ought, so whoever prays is always someone asking. Let that humility go and prayer quietly turns into a counting up of one's own merits for God to see.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church 2559

  4. When Scripture calls the heart the place of prayer, what does it mean by “the heart”?

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    Answer ② The deepest center of a person — the place where we decide and stake ourselves on the decision

    The heart Scripture speaks of is not a room where feelings are kept; it is the deepest place, where the whole person is gathered, and God alone knows it fully. Read the heart as emotion and you will write off as a failure every prayer made on a day when you felt nothing.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church 2562-2564

  5. Prayer is something only people born with a gift for it can do.

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    Answer ② No

    No. God calls every person to meet him, so prayer stands open to anyone. When prayer feels hard, that is not because you were never given the talent; prayer is by its nature something we go on learning our whole life long.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church 2566-2567

  6. What do the Gospels tell us by recording that Jesus prayed as well?

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    Answer ① That the Son of God became man and, standing where we stand, truly prayed to the Father

    Jesus' prayer was not an imitation of prayer but real prayer offered to the Father as a true man. The second leans into Arianism, the third comes close to Docetism, which treats his humanity as mere appearance, and the fourth crosses out the witness of the Gospels themselves.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church 2599-2602

  7. You have asked long and earnestly, and no answer seems to come. How is that best understood?

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    Answer ③ God always hears, and he may answer in a shape other than the one we had drawn beforehand

    Feeling that no answer has come is not evidence that the prayer failed. The first and the fourth turn the answer into wages paid out for our effort or our correctness, while the second wipes God out of prayer and leaves nothing but the managing of one's own feelings.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church 2735, 2739-2741

  8. What does the apostle's call to “pray without ceasing” look like when it is actually lived?

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    Answer ④ Keeping the times set aside for prayer and, along with them, living the whole day's work and encounters in God's presence

    Praying without ceasing is not a quantity of words; it is a heart that stays with God without a break. The first three make prayer something measured in hours and tallies, and in the end they cut life and prayer into two.

    Catechism of the Catholic Church 2742-2745