The God Squad: Why do we pray?

Q: I have been suffering from depression for over a year now. I take my medication religiously and I pray constantly for God’s help. Why won’t God answer my prayers? I am Catholic and was taught that you should pray for help. Is God not answering my prayers his way of telling me he's not going to help, so why bother praying? -- (From R)

A: Dear R, I am so happy that you are receiving treatment for your depression and so happy that you are taking your meds. Depression is a medical condition with a spiritual veneer. Our brains do not produce enough dopamine and our souls do not produce enough hope. Meds are the pharmaceutical answer. Talking therapy can also work for some patients. However, you are right that the spiritual answer is prayer. The problem with prayer is your problem.

When we think of prayer as a conversation like a human conversation, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We talk and God is supposed to listen and respond but when we hear nothing we naturally begin to doubt if we are really talking to anybody. So let me prayerfully offer to you a different way to understand what it is we are doing when we pray.

Prayer is an act of hope. We pray not to lose hope. We know the worst can happen but we also know that we will get through this. Knowing that hope can win helps us to make hope win. God fits into hope because God is the reason we hope. Whether we live or die we know that we are not alone, “You are with me.”

Prayer is an act of waiting. You say God has not answered your prayers. Let me urge you to add the word “yet” to the end of that sentence. Our timeline for an answer is not God’s timeline. God may be waiting to answer us and comfort us and enfold us after our souls enter the World To Come. Waiting is the most important spiritual virtue. We wait because we believe and because impatience is not a pretty virtue. Some people wait their whole lives. Some give up but know this, God does not give up.

Prayer is an act of gratitude. Why is it that we find it so easy to ask for more to be granted us and so hard to give thanks for what has already been bestowed upon us. Try just one day to spend the same amount of time speaking the truth of your blessings as you spend speaking the truth of your curses. My guess is that you may experience a piercing moment of joy.

Prayer is an act of repentance. The subtext of most prayers is frankly embarrassing. We assume that we are totally worthy of God’s blessings. For the saintly ones among us that is true, however they are the ones who are most likely not besieging God with a laundry list of demands. A little humility is always a good thing when praying for more than you have. Prayer can help us to repent and to recover our contact with the better angels of our nature.

I am teaching a course on Psalms and the Psalm for next week is Psalm 130. I thought it was for the course but now I realize that I chose the Psalm for you.

This psalm speaks about a cry from the depths to God. It is about forgiveness and it is about waiting. This psalm is the reason I pray.

Psalm 130, Out of the depths to God (De Profundis)

...continued

swipe to next page