The Power of Prayer. Sort Of.

The power of prayer. Always a controversial topic in scientific circles. I'm not concerned about that at this point, though. Instead, I'd like to examine some ideas and attitudes toward the power of prayer, as considered within a more traditional ideological framework.

Obviously, there are all sorts of different traditional ideological frameworks out there. Most religions believe that prayer can and/or does influence the outcome of events. You've got everything from speaking in tongues to beseeching prophets to petitioning patron saints, and many other options besides. But the basic idea is the same: apparently, God is not dispassionately considering each request on merit. When deciding whether or not to intervene, God weighs the quantity and quality of the prayers being put forth, as a key factor. Perhaps, the deciding factor.

Hence, "the power of prayer."

There seem to be two main aspects involved: the number of prayers being brought to bear, and the strength of the faith being exerted. Let's say you have a really important prayer you need to bring to God's attention. The more times you pray, and/or the more people who are united in prayer behind your intention...factor in how strong each person's faith is...take all of that and put it together: the more total faith that is behind that prayer, the more effective it will be. Don't forget any saints who are joining in, in prayer on your behalf. For sheer strength and purity of faith, it's hard to beat saints. So as you can imagine, getting the right saint or saints involved, pulling for you - that could well be the clincher.

It would be nice if there were published stats available for each saint, letting you know the relative rankings of all the various saints' faith levels. Then you could just single out one or two of the "heavy hitters," and route all your prayers through them. Easy!

Unfortunately, even if you knew those stats...you wouldn't necessarily want to go that route. Most saints have a particular area that they take an interest in. If you come to the Can't Find My Keys Guy (St. Anthony) with a Hopeless Cause...well, he's probably going to try to help you out. He's a saint! But his heart isn't really going to be in it. He'll be saying to himself, "what are you doing? This isn't my job! Go to St. Jude with this."

The whole thing is kind of like a great and holy mystery, and it's very hard to just dissect it into aspects like I tend to do with anything. When you try to break it down like that, it starts acting like it makes no sense. Yet it can be very sort of powerful and reassuring, when viewed with the proper lack of detachment.