In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Joe Heschmeyer joins Cy Kellett to tackle one of the most common questions about the life of faith: If God already knows everything, including our needs, what’s the point of prayer? Joe explains how prayer isn’t about informing God, but about drawing closer to Him—cooperating with His will, growing in trust, and participating in the divine plan.
Transcript:
Caller: I’ve been recently just like, looking into religion in general as well as Catholicism. So my question was that if God’s will is always going to be done, what is the purpose of prayer?
Joe: Ah, that’s a great question. There’s a great bit in Matthew chapter 6 about this. Jesus has this kind of funny line where he tells us not to pray like the Gentiles. This is Matthew 6, verse 8, because he says, your Father knows what you need before you ask him. But then he says, pray then like this. And he gives us the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father.
And you want to stop and say, hold on a second. Didn’t you just say God knows what we actually need before we ask him? Like, I’m not giving God any new information when I pray. All he’s getting are my worst ideas about what should happen. This is not improving at the level of, like, divine knowledge of reality.
What’s going to happen? So the reason is the will of God isn’t just for some external thing to happen. The will of God is for me to share in divine life. And that means praying. That means cooperating with God.
So you go all the way back to Genesis, and after God chooses Abraham, one of the first things that he does is tell him about his plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Why? So that Abraham will intercede before God. And even though Sodom and Gomorrah is so corrupt, they still are destroyed. Abraham’s intervention works in saving the righteous and saving Lot and his family.
And we’re told that in the next chapter that God remembered Abraham and saved Lot. So if you want to think about it like this, there’s a logical way. If I tell my kids, eat your vegetables if you want to have dessert. Now, my will is accomplished if they eat their vegetables and then have dessert. My will is technically also accomplished if they don’t eat their vegetables and don’t have dessert. They didn’t meet the condition, and so the result didn’t happen.
So your prayers actually can change things. Not for the worse, for the better. Does that distinction make sense?
In both cases, the will would be achieved if you said, eat your vegetables if you want to have dessert.
Caller: Could you give me an example that is like a positive? So let’s say I prayed for, like, I don’t know, like a good test grade or something. How would that apply to your principle?
Joe: Yeah. That God wants your success more though he wants your prayers, your growth, and like your spiritual success, if you will. And so he will often reward prayer in various ways because the good of you praying is something that is to be encouraged.
And so in James chapter five, we get some concrete cases of this. Beginning in verse 16, he says, the prayer of a righteous man has great power and its effects. Elijah was a man of like nature with ourselves, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain. And for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit.
So prayer can actually change the outcome of things. And you say, why would God allow that? Because his plan is for our cooperation in divine life. And prayer is one of the ways we share in divine life. We are in union in relationship with God, and He rewards that relationship.
Caller: So does that mean his will is not predetermined in that, like, my entire course of my life is not already seen by God because is he not omniscient?
Joe: So he already knows. He is omniscient. He knows what you’re going to do. But knowing what someone is going to do isn’t the same as forcing them to do it. You know, if you are up on a hill and you see like a train track and see that, like, the track is awry and two trains are going to collide with each other, you might see all of that happening. You’re not causing it to happen.
Now, divine foreknowledge doesn’t work just like that. I just give that as an example to say God knows how you will respond freely to the prompts that he gives you. And that’s another factor in this. When you’re praying, when you’re doing these things, and it’s having a result that’s not thwarting the divine will, that is the unfolding of the divine will.
Like, God’s plan involves your free cooperation, and he knew how you were going to freely cooperate, and he planned that into his plan from all eternity.
Caller: Okay, I think I understand what you’re getting at. Thank you so much for your help.
Joe: Absolutely. Please continue to call as you are on this exploration. It’s really beautiful, the thing you’re exploring, and you’re grappling with a very big question. And it’s okay if it’s daunting at first and if it seems kind of hard to put all the pieces together. That’s absolutely normal.
Cy: If you’d like, Laura, I would send you our big book of Catholic answers just for your interest in reading. As you have questions, there are 250 questions answered in there.