There is a very powerful question that often comes up in the life of a priest. It is one that is also asked countless times in philosophical and religious circles. The answer to that question often leads someone either to tremendous faith or tremendous despair.
Why does it feel that there are times when God doesn’t hear our prayers?
Is God listening to the plight of the parents who watch their children go astray from their faith and their family? They pray wholeheartedly for the return of their children like prodigal son, yet there are times they receive no answers.
Is God attentive to the voice of the husband, faithfully sitting at the bedside of his wife after a tragic car accident? How could he live life without her?
Dcn. Michael can testify to just how many hundreds of prayer requests our parish formally gets throughout the year, and this is not counting the thousands that are asked privately of the priest! So numerous are the prayer requests of the faithful, that we hear in the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great: “Remember Thyself O God, all those whom we have not remembered through ignorance, forgetfulness, or the multitude of names; since You knowest the name and age of each, even from his mother’s womb.”
Why does it feel that there are times when God doesn’t hear our prayers? St. Nikolai of Zica tells us in his prologue of Ochrid: “Do not ever think that God does not hear you when you pray to Him. He hears our thoughts, just as we hear the voices and the words of one another.”
If God hears our prayers, why do we rarely see immediate responses to our petitions? St. Nikolai then goes into the three reasons why God does not always immediately act to our petitions:
1.) In our weakness, we are praying to God in an unworthy manner.
When we offer our prayers and requests to God, are we praying for “Thy Will Be Done…or My will be done?”
2.) We ask something of God that He knows would be detrimental to us.
I think of poor Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, dreaming of being a Rich man, even going to the point of asking the Lord to smite him with that curse! However, we learn from the gospel and from our own experience, just how much of an illness it is to be rich in this world. To be so attached to our material possessions…desiring more and more as our lives go on….our Love of God easily turns into a love of mammon. As our Lord so pointedly stated, it is easier for a camel to enter into the eye of the needle than it is for a rich man, with all of his baggage, to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
3.) In God’s Wisdom, He delays the answer to our prayers until the right moment.
We get an incredible example of this in the life of St. John the Hut Dweller, who we commemorate today.
St. John was the son of a very well to do family in the middle of the 5th century. He was given the best possible chance to succeed in life, having received the best education in the area of philosophy and rhetoric.
One of the things that he loved to do was to read spiritual books. One day, he asked his parents for a Gospel so that he could study all of the words of Christ. This request was not a small one in the 5th century! It costs the equivalent of $5,000 just to transcribe St. Paul’s letter to the Romans! Imagine what an entire gospel would cost at the time, coupled with the fact that this gift from his parents was bound in a golden cover and studded with gemstones! It was a royal treasure, not only for the material it was made, but rather for the words written inside of it!
St. John began to yearn for the Lord, so much so that upon meeting a monk for the first time, he left his home in the middle of the night, unbeknownst to his parents, to enter into a monastery called Akoimitoi, or the monastery of the “unsleeping”. He spent six years learning a life of unceasing prayer, humble obedience, and strict abstinence.
Imagine what his parents must have gone through in those moments, not knowing if their son was stolen away by kidnappers, or if he had suffered some ill fate from an accident. Imagine the prayers of the parents that went up to God, without yielding an answer to their most painful question: “Where is our son?”
After those six years, young John began to remember his parents, how much they loved him, and what sorrow he had caused them. He was filled with a burning desire to see them again, so he asked his abbot to be released from the monastery and to return home. He bid his brothers farewell and returned back to Constantinople.
St. John didn’t just return to his home and resume his life of luxury. He rather dressed as a beggar and began to blend in with the rest of the destitute of the city. He settled in a hut near the gates of his parent’s home, where he would receive food and alms from his father when he would walk by. John lived in that hut for 3 years, enduring many hardships, but unceasingly conversing with the Lord for the salvation of his parents.
Just before his death, our Lord appeared to John in a vison, telling him that he had three days left before entering into the heavenly kingdom. He immediately asked one of the servants to give his mother a message to come to him, because he had a special request. The mother, naturally, didn’t understand what was going on. “What does this beggar want with me?”
When his mother didn’t come, John sent another message. He said in the letter that he would die in three days, and he wanted to thank her and her husband for the charity they had given him. He asked that he would be buried in his rags beneath the hut near the gates of their home. As a special gift, he gave them the Gospel which was made for him, saying: “May this console you in this life, and guide you to the next life.”
The mother and the father were stunned to receive the very Gospel they had given their lost son years ago. They went to the gates and asked the pauper where he got the Gospel, and it was there that they realized that it was their beloved John. The very same John who they no doubt prayed for years to return, was living these last three years just outside the gates of their home. With tears of joy, the family embraced one another, and enjoyed the short time that they had together. As in the vision, St. John was taken up to the Kingdom three days later at the age of 25. On the place of his hut, the parents built a Church, and beside it, a special hostel for strangers.
How many prayers were answered on that day of reunion? How many prayers of strangers were answered after the parents were inspired to build a hostel near the Church they built for their son?
Like we learn in the book of Job, who are we to question to the wisdom of God?!
May we all learn the patience and obedience necessary to hear the answer to those prayers that we humbly offer up to the Lord of All!