The Blessing of Unanswered Prayer

Or, two ways to pray about suffering.

There are two ways to pray about suffering, one of which I am rediscovering. 

Here’s one found in a Catholic missal, entitled “Prayer for the Sick”:

Lord, our God, you sent your Son into the world to bear our infirmities and to endure our sufferings. For N. and N., your servants who are sick, we ask that your blessing will give them strength to overcome their weakness through the power of patience and the comfort of hope and that with your aid they will soon be restored to health.

It's essentially a prayer for healing, with perseverance while the person waits for healing thrown in.  It accords with the biblical witness and the experience of healing that many have enjoyed. (I personally have experienced at least two healings that I attribute to the prayers of others).  

Here’s another, found in the same Catholic missal, also entitled, “Prayer for the Sick”:

O God, your Son accepted our sufferings to teach us the virtue of patience in human illness. Hear the prayers we offer for our sick brothers and sisters. May all who suffer pain, illness or disease realize that they are chosen to be saints, and know that they are joined to Christ in his suffering for the salvation of the world.

No mention or expectation of healing. In fact, suffering is characterized as a fundamental good.  It is said to join us intimately to Christ, as we become like him in every way—that is, being sanctified or becoming a “saint.”  Also in joining ourselves to Christ’s suffering, we participate in the salvation of the world.  To be clear, in Catholic theology,this does not mean that we facilitate the salvation of the world.  That has been done by Christ.  Instead, the idea is that when we suffer, we participate in Christ in a special way, the way of Christ who suffered and whose suffering forgives sins and reconciles us to God.    

(I admit that some Catholics imagine that their suffering helps in the world’s salvation, as if they have some redemptive role to play.  They remind me of an earnest Presbyterian woman who was shocked by a sermon of mine that insisted that God doesn’t need us to accomplish his will but nonetheless uses our good works to bring his love to the world.  After the sermon, she exclaimed to me almost in tears, “Then why have I been doing all these good works if God doesn’t need me?” The problem is ecumenical.)

Suffering, when accepted willingly, invites us into the community of the suffering--with Christ and with all those who suffer.  It’s the experience we all have when a friend says empathetically that she knows what we’re going through because she has endured the same suffering.  It immediately creates a bond between us. How much more when we recognize that because Jesus “was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested” (Heb. 2:18). 

This strikes me as a helpful prayer to add regularly to the prayer for healing.  Jesus certainly did this when at the end he prayed, “Take this cup of suffering from me; but nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.”

Of course, all prayers for healing are ultimately answered as we pass through the gateway of heaven. In fact, this is the reason we can unflinchingly look at unanswered prayer, and the anguish and pain it adds to our suffering.  If we didn’t have this hope, we’d die of despair.  As Tony Campolo famously preached, “It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming!”  And even when our Fridays seem to last for months or years, we do not despair but hang on in hope. 

One of my favorite prayers from the Book of Common Prayer puts it this way:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace…. 

Some Fridays will last and last—that seems to be the normal course of affairs in this life, is it not?  And while we wait for the final redemption for us and for all who suffer, we also slowly recognize a miraculous transformation taking place in us: We bond closer to Christ, learn patience and forbearance, and grow in compassion and mercy for others.  In this light, we might say that unanswered prayer is one of the greatest gifts we can be given. It’s not one we would wish on anyone, of course. Same goes for all suffering, especially the most horrific kind. But it happens to one degree or another whether we wish for it or not. 

If you think about it, our Lord and his church actually ratchet up the tension deliberately. The church is called to pray for things that are not only humanly impossible but even  have a proven track record of rarely ever being granted. Every week in worship, we pray for world peace, and have done so for thousands of years, and it’s never happened. We pray that our government leaders will be wise—hardly ever happens!  More personally, we pray for healing for the terminally ill loved one, and she dies.

And yet we are commanded to pray—ask and you shall receive, says our Lord—and to expect that a loving heavenly Father will hear our prayers and respond to them (Luke 11). And like a nagging widow, we are told to keep asking and asking and asking, badgering God with our requests (Luke 18).  All this in the face of strong evidence that it rarely seems to do any earthly good. 

Though the acting and dialog leave something to be desired, the recent movie Cabrini is well worth seeing. Mother Cabrini’s story carries the movie.  In one scene, the New York archbishop scolds Cabrini for her prophetic idealism.  He had spent decades gaining the trust of the New York political elite, who were furious with Cabrini’s moral outrage at how they had neglected and abused Italian immigrants. The archbishop reprimanded Cabrini for pushing hard for reform.  He said that in a hundred years, there will still be desperate impoverished immigrants all across the world, and that her work will, in the end, hardly make a dent in that reality. 

The archbishop is portrayed  as a cowardly servant of realpolitik.  But he was absolutely right. 

Today there are more “huddled masses” than ever. In early 20^th century New York City, where the movie is set, there were thousands.  Today worldwide, the United Nations Immigration Report estimates that in 2022 there were 281 million displaced people worldwide.  To be sure, not every one of those is living in sordid poverty, miserably oppressed by their new country.  But anyone who reads or watches the news knows that millions upon millions are living in hopeless, squalid conditions while governments scramble to figure out what to do, or scheme to deport them and make them someone else’s problem. 

This is not a plea for open borders in the name of compassion--immigration policy is a complex political and humanitarian minefield where easy answers are not to be found.  The point here is that the archbishop was right. Right in spades. 

But Mother Cabrini was also right, and right in hearts.  She didn’t just pray for the immigrants, she spent her days and nights helping whomever she could however she could—even when all her efforts and prayers, as more than one scene portrayed, ended in an immigrant’s death.  She persevered not because of some sentimental optimism that by grit and determination she could change the world; she persevered undeterred by the seeming futility of her actions and prayers.  

Why? For the same reason  Christians give themselves to do the impossible: Because there is something powerful about suffering the dashed hopes of unanswered prayer and the frustration of unfulfilled mission.  It is the way we are “joined to Christ in his suffering for the salvation of the world.”

I believe this is especially true of Catholics, who have a history of embracing their suffering and offering it up to Christ.  This has led to extremes, to be sure, where medieval Catholics scourged themselves with whips to participate in the sufferings of Christ—a practice the church no longer has any patience with.  But the basic Catholic instinct is, in my view, something that should be appreciated by all believers: unanswered prayer, whether it be for healing or for the failed hope of social justice, invites us to participate in the sufferings of Christ. 

But again, we remember the paradox: The sufferings of Christ have already, in fact, saved the world: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them, says Paul (2 Cor. 5).  The anguish of unanswered prayers about our present miseries, as real and horrible as they sometimes are, pale into insignificance when experienced in faith.  “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time,” says Paul, “are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). 

Though she helped thousands lift themselves from horrid conditions, Mother Cabrini knew that in one sense her prayers and mission were futile.  She knew she was called—as we all are—to attempt the futile.  For attempting the futile is a radical form of suffering, and persevering in it is one of the highest forms of love, for Christ and for those for whom we pray.  

It might be said that we’re in the business of disappointment and suffering, and that one of our jobs is to keep praying for the impossible--for the way of the cross is none other than the way of life and peace.  

Stephen Colbert on Suffering and Gratitude

The popular late-night host reiterates a number of themes from above. It is rare for anyone to talk this way, let alone a celebrity. He jokes in this clip about being a Catholic or a Buddhist, but Wikipedia describes him a “practicing Roman Catholic.” Seems to me Protestants can affirm his outlook, as well as many from other religious and philosophical traditions. It’s paradoxically both sobering and reassuring.

Grace and peace,

Mark

Photo credit: Boy Wirat