When Praying Seems Futile

   One evening, after a stressful day at work, I lay on our bed while my late wife, Cushla, cooked dinner. I was at a low ebb. Here I go again, I said to myself. I was sure I was headed toward another business fiasco. Only two years earlier, a company I co-owned had gone bust. My Pollyanna outlook on life had been shaken, despite what I call ‘My Encounter With The White Light’, a supernatural experience in which divine light unexpectedly burst into my consciousness, reminding me that ‘everything would be okay’ and that I was not just worthwhile but infinitely loved.

      A few months later, I kick-started a new business with an investor. However, in its first year, the company lost a small sum. I gazed at the ceiling, feeling dejected. I’m such a failure, I thought. Then, with a smidgen of faith dragged up from within my core, I turned on my side and whispered, ‘Okay, I’ll give it one more go.’

      It’s hard to explain what happened next. The walls and ceiling in the bedroom seemed to disappear. On a conscious level, I was aware they were still there, but internally, in a spiritual sense, they weren’t. In other words, my soul was in a different dimension. Suddenly, the vision changed. I didn’t see it with my physical eyes, but rather with some other sense. I saw a net filling up with fish. In no time, it was at a bursting point. I put my forearms over my eyes and said, ‘That’s enough. I have enough.’ But I was given more ‘fish’ than I could ever need. When the vision ended, I knew deep in my being that I had been blessed.

     The catch of fish reminded me of the scene in Luke 5:1-11, where the Apostle Simon Peter, along with James and John, acted on pure faith after Jesus instructed them to ‘Put out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch.’ They caught so many fish that it threatened to sink the boat.

      Gradually, over the following months, my ‘net’ in the real world began to weigh down with good fortune, and any new business project I touched over the next ten years took off. It seemed that a certain ‘know-how’ had been supernaturally downloaded into my head: I now knew what to do when making commercial decisions. It happened, I believe, because, despite facing what seemed an almost certain business failure, I had said a simple but hopeful prayer that God heard.

Trusting  In The Invisible  

     The experience of ‘my net filling up with fish’ had reminded me of the power of faith, and specifically prayer, in the face of life storms. Still, if I’m being honest, to this day I often unconsciously seek out something I think is more pressing than praying, and when I’m tired or bored, I’ll welcome any distraction. Anything but pray. Instead of turning to God if I have a problem, my first reaction is to think I can sort it out on my own. If I don’t take control, nothing will happen is my usual default position. But it seems I’m not alone: let’s face it, praying isn’t easy for most of us. It’s even harder when we hear more than ever nowadays that it’s a useless endeavour:

‘It’s time for action. Thoughts and prayers won’t work now’, certain media commentators declare after there has been a major natural disaster, a terrorist attack or a random mass shooting. Bishop Barron, in his Sunday Sermon on The Power of Prayer, notes: ‘In some extreme cases, people of prayer are mocked, as though prayer is just something completely ineffectual that we should leave behind in favor of action. We’re the first generation in recorded human history ever to feel this way. Human beings, across cultures, have always believed in the power and efficacy of prayer’

     Perhaps the main reason present generations don’t believe in the power of prayer is that they don’t have the spiritual eyes to see beyond the reality they’ve been constantly told is the only one. ‘There is no God, so why pray to a power that doesn’t exist,’ seems to be a big part of the current Western zeitgeist. I get this thinking: when my faith was particularly weak in my early twenties, I found it hard to trust in the invisible, especially when facing the storms of life. So I understand when people want to hold onto something they see as more solid and tangible. However, this worldview is illusory — the material world is really only a temporary, partial manifestation of the eternal spiritual reality. It won’t be there for us when their dreams are shattered, when loved ones die, or leave us. We might then become enlightened enough to realise that all along we were viewing life through a narrow keyhole, and that only God and the invisible are the ultimate reality. He never leaves our side and is there for us until the end.

Prayer Always Transforms Reality

During times of suffering, crises, or when prayers seem unanswered, it's normal to find it difficult to have faith in the invisible. As Pope Francis stated in January 2019  during his weekly general audience: '...many of our prayers seem not to obtain any results. How often have we asked and not received — we have all experienced this — how many times have we knocked and found a closed door? Jesus advises us, in those moments, to persist and to not give up. Prayer always transforms reality, always. If things around us do not change, at least we change; our heart changes. Jesus promised the gift of the Holy Spirit to each man and to each woman who prays.

In the same vein, the mystic Fr John Woolley received these words from Jesus in prayer time: ‘Never let life’s disappointments, and my seeming lack of response to specific prayers, cause you to doubt My absolute sufficiency. You must have in my mind, simultaneously, the realism that many situations do not immediately change, and trust that I can fulfil any purpose of mine with sureness.’

Prayer Changes You

It’s important that we don’t skip the part where Jesus says: ‘I can fulfil any purpose of mine with sureness.’ He didn’t say any purpose of yours. Not everything works out the way we want, at least not from our limited human perspective.

Although I have had many prayers answered in the way I hoped, I can honestly say, looking back over the years, that it was a huge blessing that some weren’t. I’m finally beginning to learn that when I persist in prayer, the original, often ego-driven or self-centred desire frequently weakens, and the object of my prayer becomes transformed. Moreover, the much more important consequences of my changing, rather than merely the transformation of circumstances, are now the main reason I pray. I have been inspired to do this mainly by Cushla, who was a mystic and enlightened soul:

Cushla had borne a debilitating illness for 17 years, and after getting better for only a year or so, she finally succumbed to cancer at age 51. But while she was on earth, she lived an extraordinary and fearless life, imbued with value and meaning. Her faith had shaped her to feel things, think things, see things and do things that wouldn’t have been possible if she hadn’t trusted in and prayed to a higher power.