How to be a devotee: the qualities required for all prayers

Da Gino Bertone - February 17, 2021

Sunday prayer, of all, is the prayer par excellence, because it has the five qualities required for every prayer. It must be: trusting, righteous, orderly, devoted and humble. As Saint Paul writes to the Hebrews: let us approach confidently to the throne of grace, to reach mercy and find the grace to be helped in due time. Prayer must be done with faith and without hesitation, according to St. James.

If any of you need wisdom, ask God for it… But ask for it with faith and without hesitation. For several reasons, the Our Father is the surest and most trusting prayer. Sunday prayer is the work of our lawyer, the wisest of beggars, the owner of all the treasures of wisdom (cf.Col 2: 3), the one from whom Saint John says (I, 2, 1): We have a lawyer together with the father: Jesus Christ, the Just One. Saint Cyprian wrote in his Treatise on Sunday Prayer:

Since we have Christ as advocate with the Father, for our sins, in our requests for forgiveness, for our sins, we present in our favor the words of our advocate. Even Sunday prayer seems to be the most listened to because he who, with the Father, listens is the same one who taught us; as the Psalm states. He will cry out for me and I will listen to him.

“It means saying a friendly, familiar and pious prayer to address the Lord in your own words,” says St. Cyprian. We never fail to draw fruit from this prayer, which, according to Saint Augustine, erase venial sins. Secondly, our prayer must be right , that is, we must ask God for the goods that suit us. Prayer, says St. John Damascene, is the request to God for gifts to ask for.

Often the prayer is not heard because we have begged for goods that do not really suit us. You asked and you did not receive, because you asked wrongly. It is so difficult to know for sure what to ask, how to know what to want. The Apostle recognizes, when he writes to the Romans: We do not know how to ask as he should, but (he adds), the Spirit himself intercedes for us with ineffable groans.