Love and Prayer (a conjecture)
A week or two ago I brought up the question of praying to another person’s guardian angel for that person’s welfare. I meant the question quite seriously, of course, but at the same time the voice of logic was whispering to me along these lines:
Why do you need to pray to him? He’s one of God’s angels, a being so pure in goodness that he makes you look like a dirty dishcloth. Do you think anything you could possibly say or do would make him more eager for a soul’s salvation than he already is? Do you think he’s not really trying now but may if you ask him? Do you think he needs your instruction? Do you think he’s not going to do his job if you don’t remind him?
And for that matter what’s the point of praying to your own guardian angel? The same questions apply. Perhaps your praying may make you more receptive to your angel’s guidance, but surely it isn’t going to change what the angel does.
All of this leads naturally back to the question of prayer in general. Can we really suppose that God is going to do something other than what he might have done just because we ask him to? And what does it mean to say that the infinite and eternal God, to whom all time is present, might have done otherwise? How can “might” and “have done” even have any meaning with regard to him?
Well, we can’t untangle the metaphysics of that; our minds are simply not equipped to contain the answers. But the questions point even further back. Why did God create us in the first place? Not only does he have no need of our information and advice, he has no need for us. There is nothing we can add to infinite joy.
The answer, or at least part of the answer, must be love. And that must also be the answer to the question of prayer, whether to angels or to God himself. God wishes to increase the amount of love in his creation. Prayer for another is an act of love—love for the person, obviously, but also for the one to whom the prayer is addressed. We ask in love, we receive in love. And in asking one angel to somehow intercede with another, I am supposing an exercise of love between them, and indirectly offering my love to the other.
Anything I could say about how such prayer might change things in this world would be a conjecture. And of course I have one. Keeping in mind that it’s pure conjecture, I point out that love is not an emotion, or not only an emotion. It is a thing, an entity, a substance, with an objective existence, but in the spiritual and not the physical realm; it is not merely a side effect of something happening in our bodies and having no existence apart from them, like the reaction of an animal to a potential mate.
So if prayer does increase the amount of love in the universe, then a real change has occurred. The created world is not quite the same place that it was before, or would have been if the prayer had not been uttered. The spiritual environment has been altered. Perhaps it somehow gives the work of the angel more scope and power. Perhaps—and here I’ll recognize the limits even of conjecture, and stop—it might be something akin to letting more light, or fresher air, into a room.
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