What should we pray for?
Should we pray for good weather?
In 2002 and 2003 Fr John provided articles for a Catholic newspaper and below is one of those articles exploring why we pray and what should we pray for . . .
When we saw it reported that Pope John Paul had prayed for rain during the dry summer spell in Europe, I was puzzled and uncomfortable. Surely the Pope always prays for rain. His brothers and sisters in Christ live in some of the most arid regions on earth, where there is always fear of drought and consequent crop failures. No Pope would pray just for European rain: he would pray for all peoples and thus, indirectly, would always be praying for rain.
A day or two after I read of the Holy Father’s rain prayers we had rains and floods in Spain, and television showed us the devastation. No one wrote or said this was the answer to Pope John Paul’s prayers. Was it? How does God answer prayers for rain? Does God need directions about which region needs rain?
I am not to tell my Heavenly Father what we need. He already knows before we ask, Jesus assures us. If God knows what we need before we ask then why wait for our prayer? Am I really to believe that God would allow the suffering caused by extremes of weather, waiting on our prayers before ending drought, extinguishing fires, saving crops, stopping bloodshed? What idea of a loving God is that for people to have preached to them?
I refuse the mental gymnastics that tell me God takes into account our future prayers and arranges our earthly conditions and lives according to the value and sincerity of those prayers. That reflects a cruel God who needs placating with satisfactory prayer. Jesus did not speak of his father in that way, though some horrifying passages of the Old Testament do portray a fearful God, one willing the slaughter of everyone in conquered towns and cities “placed under a ban”. But surely that is the cruelty of a primitive people, creating God in their own image and likeness – as in today’s world when wicked fools preach a God of vengeance where there are earthquakes and floods, telling terrified people that their sins have brought these evils. Innocent children dying in flood or fire or earthquake because of other people’s sins? That’s hell on earth, not faith in a loving God.
A fourteen-year-old boy told me coolly that he despised prayer as taught him at primary school – they had to pray for a fine day for Sports Day, or for a school outing. “God doesn’t have anything to do with the weather,” he said. “Did they think we were stupid?” I wish he could have spoken with those who broke the story of the Holy Father praying for rain. He would have asked them some sharp questions about prayer and rain, about prayer and the horrors of the world – Uganda, the Congo, Kosovo, the Holocaust . . .
Prayer doesn’t change anything – not weather, not civil war, not slavery, not dictatorship, not the Church. We pray to understand and accept God’s will, not to change it. Weather patterns are the Creator’s will. What else that happens is God’s will?
Fr John Daley (2003)
