The Confident Prayer Obtains Everything
Finally, as one of its major prerogatives, confidence is always heeded. We can never repeat this too often: Confident prayer obtains everything. The Scriptures recommend to us with a very accentuated insistence that we stir up our faith before presenting our supplications to God. “And all things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive,” declared the Master. The Apostle Saint James uses the same language; he wants us to pray “in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, which is moved and carried about by the wind. Therefore let not that man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord.” Now, then, to what faith do the previous passages refer? It is not the habitual faith that baptism infuses into our souls, but a special confidence that makes us hope firmly in the intervention of Providence in given circumstances. And Our Lord says this explicitly in the Gospel: “Therefore I say unto you, all things, whatsoever you ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive, and they shall come unto you.” The Master could not have described confidence more clearly. We can have a lively faith, and, nevertheless, doubt that God wishes to favorably accept this or that petition of ours. Are we by any chance certain, for example, that the object of our desire corresponds with the true good of our life? And so we hesitate. This simple hesitation, notes a theologian, diminishes the efficacy of the prayer. On other occasions, on the contrary, an intimate certainty fortifies us to the point of completely repelling every doubt or hesitation. We are so certain of having been heard that it already appears to us that the grace we are seeking is in our hands. “In view of such great confidence,” writes Father Pesch, “God grants us graces that, without this, He would not have given.” Indeed, the good that we are asking from Him was not a necessary one; or this good did not fulfill conditions that would oblige God, by virtue of His promise, to give it to us. Most of the time, however, this intimate certainty is the work of grace within us. “For this reason,” concludes the author, “a singular confidence that we will obtain this or that blessing is a kind of special promise that God makes to us that He will grant it to us.” A word of Saint Thomas Aquinas will sum up this brief digression: “Prayer,” says the Angelic Doctor, “draws its merits from charity; but its imperative efficacy comes from faith and confidence.”
