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The Paradox of Prayer

Just as a mountain top looms higher the wider it is at its base, so the greater the contraries, the more deep and sublime the paradox. Movement and immobility, eternity and time, grace and liberty, contingency and necessity, the goodness of God and the presence of evil, light and darkness this strange coexistence of apparently contradictory realities can be found in God and in the mystery of living relationships between God and the world.

Faith is "light in the darkness," but it is also "obscurity in light." Borrowing imagery from Aristotle, John of the Cross explains it thus: "The brighter the light, the more the owl is blinded."(5)

To put it more precisely, in faith darkness itself becomes light. Pseudo-Dionysius speaks of a radium divinae caliginis (ray of divine darkness), and John of the Cross explains it by quoting from Exodus 14:20: "The cloud was there with the darkness and it lit up the night," or again, "Night to night declares knowledge" (Ps 19:2). The Zen master Hakuin expresses this reality in his own words: "The brilliance of a large mirror is black as lacquer." Just as the stars sparkle in the night's dark sky, but disappear in the light of day, so is God lost to sight in a world of excessive intellectualism. If one loses the sense of God's presence, it is because of the effect this pseudo-light of rationalism and civilization has on the world.

Without their asking, God chooses freely to clothe the lilies of the fields with more beauty than Solomon in all his glory. Why then should we ask for our daily bread? In thus being obsessed with the idea of having to beg for what we do not have to ask for, are we not drawing others into the same obsession? Isn't the religious person making unnecessarily complicated something that is really quite simple?

If this God who is our merciful Father exists, should he not unfailingly give us all that we need? We would then be spared a lot of anxiety, and prayers of petition would become superfluous. "Therefore do not worry, saying, What will we eat?' or What will we drink?' or What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things" (Mt 6:31 32).

To pray does not mean to wear oneself out in useless preoccupation about tomorrow's food and clothing. And if God's will is immutable, if our salvation has been foreseen from all eternity, we may wonder, why bother praying? "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (Mt 6:8). "And not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost" (Jn 17:12).

Can our prayer change God's will, then? It would seem so from Scripture. We read that because of the fasting and the conversion of the Ninevites, God "relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened." God's will, then, is neither unchangeable nor unshakable; it allows itself to be "influenced" by human dispositions.(6)

Jesus said clearly: "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you" (Mt 17:20); "If you have faith and do not doubt, 'even if you say to this mountain, Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,' it will be done" (Mt 21:21); and again, "So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mk 11:24). But he adds: "And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?" (Mt 6:27); "And even the hairs of your head are all counted" (Mt 10:30); "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father" (Mt 10:29). Such is the unfathomable mystery of this God, eternal and unchanging, who governs to the ends of the earth and infinitely surpasses us while at the same time remaining sensitive to the least prayer or tear of repentance. It is not easy to explain our relationship with God in philosophical and theological terms.

Perhaps a comparison will help satisfy our intellectual curiosity. Picture a boat whose stern is fastened to the embankment by a rope. Once aboard this boat we pull in the rope. In doing so we have the illusion of drawing the embankment toward us while in fact it remains absolutely immobile: in reality we ourselves and the boat are moving toward the embankment. Likewise, God's will is not changed by our prayer; by it we are drawn to God in order to accomplish the divine will.

The essential element in prayer, then, is that, regardless of how it is answered, we continue to ask and to believe that God's plan will be fulfilled in us. "If you choose, you can make me clean" (Mk 1:40). Prayer is that constant turning to God, firmly convinced that God can purify us by his will alone and not by the efficacy of our prayer. We must "strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Mt 6:33) and ask, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven" (Mt 6:10; Lk 11:2).

The truth is that "we do not know how to pray as we ought" (cf. Rom 8:26). An abyss of darkness often separates our petitions to God and God's will for us.

The incomprehensible silence of God is a heavy burden for us to bear. Yet a mother who at the bedside of her suffering child asks for the miracle that will save the child from the cruel fate of imminent death is, perhaps without realizing it, in communion with the mystery of Christ: "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want" (Mt 26:39). Christ pleads thus with his Father as his sweat falls to the ground like great drops of blood. And what is the real outcome? "It is finished" (Jn 19:30). "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46). Don't these words pronounced on the cross, in the peace of supreme abandonment, seem to contradict the cry uttered a few moments before he dies: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34).

How can one fathom that Christ, who is God, has been abandoned by God, his Father? Only in terms of this most mysterious paradox of Christ, the God-man his agony on the cross and the glory of his resurrection where the paradoxes of prayer, faith, and love also reach their limits. For to love is to live for God by dying to self; to believe is to discern the presence of God in the darkness of the human intellect; to pray is to discover God's oasis hidden in the desert of the soul.

If prayer has the power to move God, this does not necessarily indicate that the fervor of our prayer has changed God's eternal and unchangeable will. We ourselves are changed by prayer; God is not. Unanswered prayer, in particular, truly joins with the prayer of Christ that incorporates the mystery of the cross, dying to self in order to pass from death to resurrection. One thus prays for the faith to be able to discern God's hand in suffering and the strength to endure it, rather than yearning to avoid it, for "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!" (Job 1:21).

I enter into the depths of suffering,

and the suffering disappears,

what remains is "living."

Jukichi Yagi(7)

When all that remains is "living," the "I" no longer exists, for only God lives in me. "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

True prayer offers no room for fanaticism, superstition, or selfishness. (Let us not fall into the presumption of the renowned Samurai Miyamoto Musashi, who claims that "it is cowardly to pray in times of danger.") It is the wellspring force of divine life flowing in the "transparent" soul of one whose trust is fully centered in God. This divine force, secret and strong, gently inspires all those who seek the truth; it will reunite them one day, beyond time and space, in the cosmic and eternal world.

The silence of the Bodhidharma(8) as he sat for nine years facing a wall became the source of "Zen" spirituality, and for 1,500 years it has nourished thousands of souls. The attitude of Christ during his forty days and forty nights in the desert and his victory over temptation contrast remarkably with human pride in wanting to be equal to God. This humility of God-become-human thus became the indispensable foundation of prayer at every stage of the spiritual life. Solitude of Christ! Solitude of the Bodhidharma! At the extremity of prayer words vanish, or rather the "silence-become-word" surpasses all that can be uttered. Prayer becomes the silence of Love, and this silence reveals the "I" in its deepest aspects; and, should words suddenly arise in prayer, we must regard them as fruits of love that send us back to silence.