Thinking prayerfully

Christian Century, Oct 4, 2003

THINKING PRAYERFULLY: The Scottish theologian John Macquarrie has had some wise things to say about prayer, including petitionary and intercessory prayer. Petitionary prayer shouldn't be an egocentric exercise in asking God to meet our needs. Nor should petitionary or intercessory prayer be treated like magic, like some pulling of celestial strings to manipulate the affairs of life.

Talk about whether petitionary prayer "works" tends to reduce something mysterious to mechanics, ever, though he is sure that prayer has repercussions beyond those who offer up prayers. Prayer for Macquarrie acknowledges the permeable presence of God everywhere in creation. "Intercessory prayer provides ... openings into the dense texture of the human situation through which can come the creative and healing power of the reality we call God," says Macquarrie. "Prayer, as petition and intercession, helps to make the human person porous to the divine reality" (from Owen F. Cummings's John Macquarrie, a Master of Theology, Paulist).