Why do we pray? Homily for Thursday, October 2, 2025

Why do we pray? Does God really listen? In what ways does God protect us? And do we find ourselves protected when things go wrong? Readings for Today.

Why do we pray?

Why do we pray? That’s not as easy a question to answer as we might think. For example, how long, how often, and how much have we been praying for peace in Gaza? And yet, there is not peace in Gaza.

There was a study done on people who were disaffected in their faith, trying to gather the reasons for their disaffection. They discovered some startling things. One was that people often became disaffected around the age of 13. Now there were a lot of reasons, but one that I want to focus on today was that there were those who prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed that Grandpa would get better, but Grandpa didn’t. And they said, “Well, I prayed and prayed and prayed, but Grandpa didn’t get better, therefore I don’t believe in God.”

And we have many instances like this. We pray for a loved one. We pray that we might be safe. We pray that we might not be in difficulty when we’re traveling or riding a bus or whatever. And yet, sometimes it does not seem that God answers our prayers. And that can be a real struggle, until we understand why we pray.

Because it is not the case, first of all, that we pray so that we can inform God of something He doesn’t already know. God knows everything. And so prayer has to be not so much for us to influence God, who is infinite and all-knowing, but rather to open our hearts to deeper faith in God, not simply that the things we see in this world will be granted, but much more importantly that our salvation in heaven will be granted.

For when our faith is deeper and stronger, we are more likely to enter into the relationship with Jesus more deeply, and ultimately to live forever with Him in heaven. Today’s Feast of the Guardian Angels has the same basic question. If guardian angels are meant to protect us, why do bad things happen to good people?

St. Thomas Aquinas said the problem of evil was one of the most difficult problems. In fact, it was the most difficult problem in believing in God. Because evil is not pleasant. Evil is not good. Evil is not something we seek out unless we choose to reject God. Evil, rather, is something that often happens to us, sometimes even when it does not appear we’ve done anything directly to seek this evil.

So, on this Feast of the Guardian Angels, what exactly does it mean to say that we have an angel assigned to us for our good? It means that we need to see everything with the eyes of faith. It is not that things in this world are not important, but they’re not most important. Most important for us is that we be saved. Most important for us is that God lives forever in heaven and we with Him. That we can be in the profound presence of God.

Because the world is so difficult, because there is evil in the world, because things don’t go the way that we want them to, because even with all that God has done for us, we still choose to reject God and sin, we each have a guardian angel, whose main task is to keep us spiritually healthy in our relationship with God.

The idea of guardian angels is deep. We go back a long way. We can see, for instance, that in the Gospel, Jesus warned people not to harm children because their angels in heaven were looking out for them. Saint Jerome, who we celebrated a couple of days ago, spoke about guardian angels centuries ago. And there is something quite comforting about knowing that God loves us so much that He takes every available method to enable us to be saved.

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