Never Give Up Prayer

Knowing a prayer, or knowing what to pray, is not enough; one must persevere, endure, and persist in prayer; in other words, one must grow in praying (Luke 11: 5-13). The gospel says, “ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” God will never disappoint someone who asks something good, goes after it, and does all in his/her capacity to get it.

The passage places in it two stories relationship; one is between two friends, another is between a father and a son. Friends and parents have many things in common, one, we can approach them as many times as needed, the relationship only grows with it; two, they always wish and give the best for the other. The gospel ends in suggesting, earthly friends and parents are great in giving, if then, how much more our heavenly friend and parent will give us good things. Persistence in prayer is growing in prayer. Persistence at some level is sheer discipline of doing things. Things that seem difficult at first can become possible by persistence.

Persistence in prayer does not only increase the quantity of prayer, but also growing in the quality of our prayer and prayer life. In Christian spiritual theology there are various kinds of prayer, mainly, (1) Prayers of petition—for what we need, and intercession—for what others need (2) Confession and deliverance prayers (3) Prayers of thanksgiving and adoration (4) Prayer of union, transformation, contemplation, centring. Prayer of petition and prayer of union are the greatest them. All begin by prayers of petitions and intercession; and gradually awakens to prayer of union, and then on one goes to the chapel not to ask for things, but just to be in union with the Lord.

A prayer of union is a prayer that asks for a deeper connection with God, a longing to experience a fuller relationship with God; it is absence of distractions because the soul is entirely absorbed in God. St. Teresa of Avila, known as the Teacher of Prayer described the soul as a silkworm that is transformed into a butterfly after a union with God. For St. Francis of Assisi it is to partake in the sufferings of Christ; he towards the end of his life received the stigmata as a proof of his union with God. You don't ask, seek, or knock any more. God is sufficient.

An Italian fisherman called John Napoli, always prayed for a huge catch of fish that would change his and his family’s fortunes for the better. One night he made his dream catch of fish. He was returning with his huge catch of fish that foggy morning. He piloted his boat beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, into San Francisco harbour. What he saw next horrified him. There were people everywhere in the water. A hospital ship, the Netherlands, had collided with an oil tanker. People were shouting all around, “help me! Save me! I’m drowning!” Napoli tried to evade them to save his huge catch of fish. But something with him did not allow him to just pass by.

John Napoli carefully guided his fishing vessel to a cluster of drowning men. Quickly he began to pull them abroad one by one. Soon the small fishing boat was overcrowded. And then John Napoli made one of the hardest decisions of his life. He knew that the lives of those men were far more important than his small fortune of fish. Within minutes he dumped his entire cargo of 2000 pounds of fish, worth thousands of dollars, into the waters of San Francisco Bay. Then he pulled more than seventy people abroad his boat.

Later on, speaking to reporters who enquired about the sacrifice he had to make in order to save the people, he said, “at some point I realised it is better to be the man who gave me the fish than be with the fish that he has given me.”

In Luke 22 we see Jesus for a moment going through these stages. He thinks of the cup (suffering) he has to drink, he prays to God to takes that cup away from him. But later he surrenders saying, ‘not my will Lord but your will be done.’ God was sufficient for Jesus. And soon enough, Jesus on the Cross, breathed his last, saying, it is finished.

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