486 PRAYER OF PETITION

YOUCAT Lesson 486

YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic youth

486  Why should we petition God?

God, who knows us through and through, knows what we need.  Nevertheless, God wants us to ask, to turn to him in times of need, to cry out, implore, lament, call upon him, indeed, even to struggle with him in prayer.  [2629-2633]

Avenge me of mine adversary by Anonymous contracted by Pacific Press Publishing Company(1900) …..486

The Parable of the Persistent Widow. 

Then he told them a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.  He said, “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being.  And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’  For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.’”  The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says.  Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night?  Will he be slow to answer them?  I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.  But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”-- Luke 18:1-8

Certainly God does not need our petitions in order to help us.  It is for our own sake that we are supposed to offer prayers of petition.  Someone who does not ask and does not want to ask shuts himself up in himself.  Only a person who asks opens himself and turns to the Author of all good.  Someone who asks goes back home to God.  Thus the prayer of petition brings man into the right relationship to God, who respects our freedom.

[2629-2633]

II. PRAYER OF PETITION

2629 The vocabulary of supplication in the New Testament is rich in shades of meaning: ask, beseech, plead, invoke, entreat, cry out, even "struggle in prayer."( Compare Romans 15:30; Colossians 4:12.)¹⁰² Its most usual form, because the most spontaneous, is petition: by prayer of petition we express awareness of our relationship with God. We are creatures who are not our own beginning, not the masters of adversity, not our own last end. We are sinners who as Christians know that we have turned away from our Father. Our petition is already a turning back to him. –CCC

2630 The New Testament contains scarcely any prayers of lamentation, so frequent in the Old Testament. In the risen Christ the Church's petition is buoyed by hope, even if we still wait in a state of expectation and must be converted anew every day. Christian petition, what St. Paul calls "groaning," arises from another depth, that of creation "in labor pains" and that of ourselves "as we wait for the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved."( Romans 8:22-24.)¹⁰³ In the end, however, "with sighs too deep for words" the Holy Spirit "helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words."( Romans 8:26.)¹⁰⁴ –CCC

PRAYER OF PETITION

2631 The first movement of the prayer of petition is asking forgiveness, like the tax collector in the parable: "God, be merciful to me a sinner!"( Luke 18:9-14.)¹⁰⁵ —CCC

 It is a prerequisite for righteous and pure prayer. A trusting humility brings us back into the light of communion between the Father and his Son Jesus Christ and with one another, so that "we receive from him whatever we ask."( 1 John 3:22; compare 1 Jn 1:7.)106  Asking forgiveness is the prerequisite for both the Eucharistic liturgy and personal prayer.—CCC

2632 Christian petition is centered on the desire and search for the Kingdom to come, in keeping with the teaching of Christ.( Compare Matthew 6:10,33; Luke 11:2,13.)¹⁰⁷ There is a hierarchy in these petitions: we pray first for the Kingdom, then for what is necessary to welcome it and cooperate with its coming. This collaboration with the mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit, which is now that of the Church, is the object of the prayer of the apostolic community.( Compare Acts of the Apostles 6:6;  Acts 13:3.)¹⁰⁸ It is the prayer of Paul, the apostle par excellence, which reveals to us how the divine solicitude for all the churches ought to inspire Christian prayer.( Compare Romans 10:1; Ephesians 1:16-23; Philippians 1:9-11; Colossians 1:3-6; Col 4:3-4,12.)¹⁰⁹ By prayer every baptized person works for the coming of the Kingdom. –CCC

2633 When we share in God's saving love, we understand that every need can become the object of petition. Christ, who assumed all things in order to redeem all things, is glorified by what we ask the Father in his name.( Compare John 14:13.)¹¹⁰ It is with this confidence that St. James and St. Paul exhort us to pray at all times.( Compare James 1:5-8; Ephesians 5:20; Philippians 4:6-7; Colossians 3:16-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18.)¹¹¹ –CCC