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Natalie,
Certainly, we can ask, and God will hear. But this is not a magical guarantee that we will infallibly get exactly what we want. One Scripture commentator remarks:
It is natural enough for us to ask for things when in need. By the multiplication of near synonyms here and by the tense of the imperatives used, the Lord is commanding us not to give up hope when our prayer apparently goes unheard. If God is good, why does he make us wait? Why would he make his children go hungry when they are at their rope’s end? A careful reading of this passage indicates that the flaw is with us, the askers, not with God, the giver.
If the good father does not give his child a stone when he asks him for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks him for a fish, what does that father do when the child demands a stone and a snake for his nourishment and will have nothing else? The good father will allow the child to go hungry, perhaps to approach starvation, before witnessing the grotesqueness of a stone diet or a bite from a poisonous snake inflicted by his demented child on himself. The concluding verse (11) carefully states that “your Father in heaven will give good things to those who ask him for them.” In heaven, where the Father dwells, there is no store of evil: God is utterly poor in evil things. He has none to give, no matter how insistently we demand them of him.
Leiva-Merikakis, Erasmo, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapters 1–25 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996–2012), I, 297 |
Another commentary says:
In speaking of the effectiveness of prayer, Jesus does not put any restriction: “Every one who asks receives”, because God is our Father. St Jerome comments:
“It is written, to everyone who asks it will be given; so, if it is not given to you, it is not given to you because you do not ask; so, ask and you will receive” (Commentary on Matthew, 7).
However, even though prayer in itself is infallible, sometimes we do not obtain what we ask for. St Augustine says that our prayer is not heard because:
We ask “aut mali, aut male, aut mala.” “Mali” (= evil people): because we are evil, because our personal dispositions are not good; “male” (= badly): because we pray badly, without faith, not persevering, not humbly; “mala” (= bad things): because we ask for bad things, that is, things which are not good for us, things which can harm us.
(cf. De civitate Dei, 20, 22 and 27; De Serm. Dom. in monte, 2, 21, 73)
In the last analysis, prayer is ineffective when it is not true prayer. Therefore, “Pray. In what human venture could you have greater guarantees of success?” (St. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, 96).
Saint Matthew’s Gospel, The Navarre Bible (Dublin; New York: Four Courts Press; Scepter Publishers, 2005), p. 68 |
The cancer may be an opportunity for the family to express their love in a way that benefits their salvation, and a form of saving purification for the patient, for example. (Remember that this life is only an infinitesimal fraction of our entire existence; there is the life to come, and being prepared for a good outcome there is far more important than surviving this life with minimal suffering.) Suffering is a way that we become more like Christ, so God sometimes allows it for his own purposes. But he also has miracles in store, so it is certainly worth praying, and prayer that perseveres changes us as well.
As for the conversion of a loved one, that's a bit trickier because it depends on the free will of an individual, but we can and should pray for it, certainly. I've been praying for my father's conversion for many years with no apparent progress. Yet St. Monica also prayed decades for her son St. Augustine, and that bore fruit abundantly.
I can promise you that some people who pray, even earnestly pray, for a given outcome don't receive what they ask for. Sick people who are prayed for do die. Why this happens is ultimately a mystery (look up "theodicy"). But we do know that God wants what is best for us, and gives us what we need, in his own time, if not always what we want, in our time, because God is good.
Eric Ewanco
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