From time to time we hear from people at the apostolate who are fairly convinced that God just doesn’t answer their prayers. Is it possible that we can petition the Lord and He would turn a deaf ear to us? Not if we understand the nature of God.

As St. John tells us in his epistle, God is love (1 John 4:8). And love, defines Pope John Paul II, is an act of total self-donation. All we need do is look at a crucifix to see the truth of it: “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that everyone who believed in Him might not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

So, it logically follows that if God is love, and love is an act of total self-donation, then God to be God, must give us all of Himself. He, who is Perfect Goodness, must give us the Good Who is Himself. Therefore, we can deduce that God not only answers our prayer, but must always be answering our prayer.

Why, then, does it sometimes seem like He isn’t? Three reasons may well answer this question.

First, perhaps what we are asking of God is not in our best interests or in the best interests of the one for whom we are praying. Remember, God is perfect Goodness. He only wills us the good, and His will is the ulitmate good. If what we are praying for is not good for us or good for another, if it is outside of God’s will, God will not answer that prayer. Let’s admit it. Because we are not God, we do not have His mind. We really don’t know what is best and we don’t always know the best way to pray for a given situation or circumstance. Our motivation may well be good, and it is that motivation to which God responds — in the way He knows is best given His omniscience and His love for us.

Therefore, our prayer must always be with the intention we state in the Our Father: “Thy will be done.” We place our trust in an All-Good God who responds to our every need — and the needs of those we love — even when the answer doesn’t seem to match our expectation.

Second, sometimes God’s answer is “Wait.” This is especially difficult when our perception of a need seems to be urgent. However, remember that our God is an “all-knowing” God. He knows well the best time for our prayer to be answered and He knows precisely the best way for it to be answered. When it seems that God is delaying to answer our prayer, He may be calling us to greater faith and trust in Him. He may be about the business of building up our “spiritual muscle.” God wants for us to be persistent and persevering.

Recall the parable that Jesus tells about the necessity of praying always and never losing heart. We find this parable in Luke 18: 2 -8. This excerpt is taken from the NRSV:

In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘”Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself,  “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” And will God not grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. and yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

Perhaps our fervent and consistent prayer of petition will help us have that faith the Son of Man desires to find when He comes again. We grow in these virtues when we continue to have faith and trust in God and lift our prayers to Him.

Sometimes it seems that God isn’t answering our prayer because the one for whom we are praying is resistant to His will.  The fact is God will never trespass our free will — even when our will can lead us into hardship, trouble, or perdition. The reason for this is that God does not take back the gifts He gives. He has given us free will in accord with His image and likeness, and He will not violate the gift He has bestowed upon us.

When our prayer of petition seems to be going unheard, perhaps it is because in his stubbornness or obstinacy, the person for whom we are praying is refusing God’s grace and love. In these cases, it is important to keep praying for the need but also to pray for the grace of conversion of heart. A radio guest once told me that a good way to pray for conversion of heart is that we ask God to give the desire for conversion to the one we are lifitng up. I think this is an effective prayer and one we should be offering up both for ourselves and for those we love. If we are honest with ourselves, we can acknowledge that we all have unconverted areas that need to come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Finally, sometimes we do pray and God’s answer is “No.”This can be an especially hard answer to hear. And yet, this is where our travail or suffering can be of great benefit for ourselves and others. Because our omniscient and good God can only will us the ultimate good, we must trust that He has our eternal salvation in mind. When God says “No” to our petition, He is offering us a greater good. In these situations, an act of humility and a response of surrender is an appropriate response. By uniting our disappointment, tribulation, reversal, and pain to the passion of Jesus, we suffer redemptively and great spiritual blessings can flow from the cross we carry. With a heart centered on God’s will, even in the difficult, we may even find that our suffering produces the sweet balm of joy.