Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1866

You almost always believe that what you ask in prayer must be carried out by a kind of miracle. This mistaken belief is the source of several superstitious practices and many deceptions. It also leads to the denial of the efficacy of prayer. Considering that your request is not attended to as you wish, you conclude that it is useless, and then, sometimes, you whisper against God’s justice. Others believe that having God established eternal laws, to which every being is submitted, it is not possible to breach them to satisfy the wishes that are addressed to God. And to prevent against such a mistake, or better saying, against the exaggeration of these two points, I propose to give you a few explanations about the acquiescence to prayer.

There is an incontestable truth, that God does not alter or suspends the course of laws that rule the universe to nobody. Without that, the order of nature would be incessantly disturbed by the caprice of the first one to show up. It is therefore true that every prayer than could only be attended by the breach of those laws would remain ineffective. That would be the case, for example, the one whose objective was the return to life of a truly dead man, or the reestablishment of health if the disorder in the physical organization were irremediable.

It is not less true that no attention is given to futile or inconsiderate requests. But rest assured that every pure and selfless prayer is heard, and that the intention is always considered, even when God, in His wisdom, believed not to be proper to have it attended. That is when you must give proof of your humility and submission to His will, saying that God, better than yourself, knows what is best for you.

There are, certainly, general laws to which man is fatally submitted to, but it is a mistake to believe that the smallest circumstances in life are predetermined in an irrevocable way. If that were the case, man would be a machine, without initiative, and consequently, without responsibility. Free-will is one of man’s prerogative. From the moment when man is free to move right or left, acting according to the circumstances, his movements are not regulated like those of a machine. According to the way something is done, or not done, according to one way or another, the events that depend on that follow a different course. Since they are subordinate to the decision of man, they are not inevitable. Fatal are those that do not depend on his will. But every time that man can act, because of his free-will, there is no inevitability.

Man has, therefore, a circle, within which he can move freely. Such freedom of action has the limits of the natural laws that nobody can transpose; or, better said, that freedom, in the sphere of action, is part of those laws. It is necessary, and it is through that freedom that man is called to concur to the general march of things. Since he does it freely, he has the merit for the good that is done, and the demerit for the bad things, for his careless, for his negligence and inactivity. The fluctuations that his will may cause to the events of life, in no way disturb the universal harmony, because those fluctuations are part of the trials assigned to man on Earth. In the limit of things that depend on the will of man, God may therefore, and without breaching His laws, yield to a prayer, when it is fair, and whose realization may be useful; but it frequently happens that God judge its utility and opportunity differently from us, and that is the reason why there isn’t always acquiescence. If God believe to be proper to attend it, it is not by modifying His sovereign designs that it is done, but through means that do not revoke the general order if we can say so. The Spirits, executioners of His will, are then assigned to provoke the circumstances that must lead to the desired result. Such a result almost always requires the help of an incarnate. It is, therefore, that help that the Spirits prepare, inspiring the thought of an action in those that must cooperate; inciting them to go to a point, and not to another; provoking convenient meetings that seem to be to serendipitous. Chance, therefore, no longer exists, not in the assistance that is received, nor in the disgraces that are experienced.

In suffering, prayer is not only a proof of trust and submission to the will of God, that hears it if it is pure and selfless, but still has the effect, as you know, of establishing a fluidic current that carries far away in space the thought of the afflicted one, like the air carries the sound of his voice. That thought reverberates in the sympathetic hearts and these, through an unconscious movement and attracted by a magnetic power, go to the place where their presence may be useful. God, that wishes to help the one that implores, could do it instantaneously on His own, no doubt, but as I have already said, He makes no miracle and things must follow their natural course. God wants men to practice charity and help one another. Through His messengers, He takes the complaint where it can find echo, and good Spirits breathe a good thought there. Although solicited, man has all the freedom, by the simple fact that the source of the thought is unknown. There is no embarrassment. Man, therefore, has all the merit of spontaneity if he yields to the voice that intimately appeals to his sense of duty, and all the demerit if he resists, dominated by an egoistic indifference.

Q – There are cases, like in an imminent danger, in which assistance must be immediate. How can it arrive in time, if one must wait for the good will of a man, and if that good will is absent, given the free-will?

A – You must not forget that the guardian angels, the protecting Spirits, whose mission is to take care of those that are assigned to them, follow them step by step, in a way of speaking. They cannot avoid the apprehension of danger that is part of their trials, but if the consequences of the danger may be avoided, and since they foresaw everything in anticipation, they did not wait for the last minute to prepare the help. If they sometimes reach out to men of bad will it is to try to awake the good feelings in them, but they do not count on them. When, in a critical situation, a person shows up to help, as if it should be, and you say: “It is the Providence that sends her”, you are stating a greater truth than you sometimes realize. If there are pressing cases, others which are less so require a certain time to bring about a combination of favorable circumstances, especially when it is necessary that the Spirits triumph, by inspiration, over the apathy of people whose cooperation is necessary for the result to be obtained. These delays in the fulfillment of desire are tests of patience and resignation; then, when the realization of what one wished arrives, it is almost always by a chain of circumstances so natural, that absolutely nothing detects an occult intervention, nothing accuses the slightest appearance of supernatural; things seem to work out on their own. This must be so for the double reason that the means for the action do not deviate from general laws, and, second, that, if the assistance of the Spirits were too obvious, man would rely on them and as such, would get used to not counting on oneself. This assistance must be understood by thought, in a moral sense, and not in the material senses; man’s belief must be the result of his faith and trust in the goodness of God. Unfortunately, because he has not seen the finger of God performing a miracle for him, he too often forgets the One to whom he owes his salvation, and then glorifies chance; it is ingratitude which, sooner or later, receives its atonement.

A protector Spirit