Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy. Prayer, in the moral government of God, is as strong and far reaching as the law of gravitation in the material world, and it is as necessary as gravitation to hold things in their proper atmosphere and in life.

The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it had bridled the rage of lions, hushed the anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. Prayer is an all-efficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings.

Based on these axiomatic truths then, what would we say about the results we see around us? If a good father, let alone our infinitely benevolent heavenly father, does not give a scorpion when we ask for an egg, then why is the very air around us rife with influences, practices, and theories which sap foundations?

Why are the most veritable truths and the most self-evident axioms being besieged and going down by insidious and invisible attacks?

Why have the last several decades been ones where church membership and attendance have continually been declining?

I can ask in a limitless amount of ways the same thing, but more to the point, I can ask you to think about what our answers might say about our individual and collective prayer lives?

I'm reminded of Daniel 9:13 "All this disaster has come upon us; yet we have not made our prayer before the LORD our God." As Daniel confessed his sin and the sin of Israel, he remembered the sin of prayerlessness. Even when they faced great trial and calamity, Israel still did not make their prayer before the LORD. When we sense trial or difficulty, it should drive us immediately to prayer – when we are not so driven, it should be a wake-up call to the coldness of our heart.

If this sounds a bit foreign to you, remember that what disinguishes the Christian view of history from that of secular philosophy is above all the belief in the divine government of the world and the intervention of the Spirit in history, and in the power of man to resist or to co-operate with this divine action. These conceptions are expressed most clearly in the prophets who, in all the crises that changed the course of history, saw the hand of God.

Let me be perfectly clear though: these are not my ideas. For example, one of the fundamental presuppositions of English Catholic Historian Christopher Dawson was that a culture is a living thing that can be properly understood only by viewing it in its historical entirety; that its center, its cohering principle, is its religion; and that important social and cultural changes always have an essential religious dimension.

It is because of all this that I urge us to see the culture war not as a cause but rather an effect; not as a disease but a symptom; not as a battle for our way of life by our "political enemies" (who are really our neighbors) but as a battle for our souls by the principalities and powers who right now at this very moment are winning (see this article for a good example of what spiritual warfare can look like: https://unitingourprayers.com/articles/hazbin-hotel-spiritual-warfare ).

Dawson's prescription for his time, one that has been echoed with great force by Popes John Paul and Benedict in our own, is simple and sweeping. The crisis was a spiritual crisis; the solution needed to be spiritual as well.

That is why we must, by all the fastenings we can find, cable ourselves to prayer. To be loose in time and place is to open the door to Satan. To be exact, prompt, unswerving, and careful in even the little things, is to buttress ourselves against the Evil One.

Now...I'm certain that if you're here reading this, you already pray, and that's a good thing. What I am proposing though is that we might not be praying in the way we ought. For example, what would we think if we compare ourselves to what we read in Joel 2:

¹⁵Blow the ram’s horn in Zion,
consecrate a fast,
proclaim a sacred assembly.
¹⁶Gather the people, sanctify the congregation,
assemble the aged, gather the children,
even those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her chamber.
¹⁷Let the priests who minister before the LORD
weep between the portico and the altar...

Rend your hearts, he says to them. What better means to do that than prayer?

All that said, what I really want you to notice though is how no one is excluded. Everyone is enjoined to participate--no one is left out. We must not let ourselves conceive of salvation as a happy after-life to be attained by pious individuals as the reward of their moral perfection, or their religious practices. The Christian idea of salvation is essentially social. United we stand, divided we fall, as the saying goes. Thus, would not the same hold true, at least in some sense, for our prayer lives?

I therefore urge us to see prayer--and the uniting of our prayer efforts--as more than necessary if we don't want to see the current trends continue to progress as they have been. May this site be one of the tools we can use to call upon God to have mercy on our world and hear our prayers.