What are we really doing when all we can do is pray—or not even?
It may be Easter, but lament comes more readily than alleluia.
A friend recently gave me language I didn’t know I needed: “communion of the helpless.” We were talking about intercessory prayer, pondering the mysteries of a practice so familiar yet sometimes so vexing: What, theologically, are we doing? Why do we think it matters, and what do we believe it accomplishes? Tragedies like coronavirus or terminal cancer can bring questions like these into sharp relief. We are asked to pray for a person or a community in crisis. A desperate plea for someone we love escapes our lips, half-formed and barely breathed, as the heart races or we feel ourselves go numb.
Sometimes these kinds of prayers feel like attempts to wheedle or cajole, to move to action a distant, immovable deity. Sometimes they seem more like hostage negotiations, as we bargain with God to restore a loved one to us safe and well. Many people speak with confidence of “the power of prayer,” summoning “prayer warriors,” as if the outcome they are praying (or fighting?) for is a foregone conclusion. For others, intercessory prayer is not so much about God’s answers as human actions. As Pope Francis puts it, “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.”
But the questions persist. What are we doing when all we can do is pray? And what should we do when we are asked to pray and discover we can’t?
