Jesus would have me enter on this meditation in the spirit of a little child going to school again. He is the Master and He is keen on my progress, and all progress He measures by my growth in prayer and the spirit of prayer.
I take my place in the bench with the others who frequent this school, and sit here to learn. He is standing before His class, up there at the blackboard, and the lesson begins. In a voice of music, He turns to us and explains that there are four great forms which prayer is wont to take. The first of these _ He writes the word in large characters on the board _ is called Petition.
In this prayer we ask God, our heavenly Father, to supply our many needs. Temptation beckons us ingratiatingly away from Him and we beg Him to keep us steadfast. Poverty and financial worries occupy our minds and we turn to our Father and petition Him to send us relief. Sickness lays its hand on the wife or child or husband we love, and we unite, as we kneel around the sickbed, in imploring God to spare and to heal. Our needs are many; our necessities are never laid aside; in our penury we lift up our voices in the prayer of petition.
And God bids us do so by the lips of His divine Son. But why? Surely He knows all that I need without waiting for me to come and tell Him. Indeed, have I not Our Lord's own word for this? "Your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things." And He knows "before you ask Him." Of course He does. Why ask Him, then?
Simply because He is a Father. And, just as a human father who intends to give his child what it begs from him is gladdened by its trustful petition, so our heavenly Father, loving as He does, would hear us tell Him of our needs and of the confidence with which we approach Him in our necessities. Thus prayer is not merely a means of getting things from God. There are souls who seem to regard God as a serving man, to fetch and to carry, and to call them on the phone and let them know the goods are arrived!
Petition is possessed of an intrinsic value of its own, altogether independent of whether we get what we ask for or not. "Behold I have created thee and redeemed thee and now thou art and prayest Me." The whole purpose of bringing me into existence is that I should pray. "My God, how aweinspiring a preparation for the prayer of the soul! Countless ages and the dramas of Creation and Redemption culminate in the union of the soul with God.... The whole universe is not too vast a setting for that silent, hidden encounter between any one tiny soul and the Eternal Trinity."
There is the privilege of presenting a petition to God; there is the confidence shown, the recognition of one's poverty and of the heavenly Father's bounty. All this gives a value to our petition that does not in any way depend on the answer we receive. It is a high honor to be chosen out of a group of pilgrims to present a gift to the Holy Father. Petition, explains the divine Teacher, is a privilege too _ that the soul be presented to God and permitted to tell Him trustfully of its needs.