efficacy of prayer

Prayer is true living.
There are various sorts of prayers.
Petitions, incantations, invocations, acts of faith, acts of hope, acts of love, calling on the creator desperately, speaking the holy name with reverence, going on pilgrimage to a holy place, community praise in church, sitting in silence before a holy image, celebrating friendship, thinking of God while working, rejoicing in the countryside or in the cities, giving thanks for all your gifts, renouncing the world as a sacrifice, offering something to God, visiting someone, minding loved ones, tending the sick, being still and knowing that he is God.
A wag has stated (I think it was Saint Augustine of Hippo) that when you sing, you pray twice.
Prayer gets things done.
It has been claimed that Ugo Festa was cured of multiple sclerosis while looking on an image of the divine mercy.
Many thousands in our time say they have been healed during pilgrimages to Lourdes.
My own greatest ever experience of peace, a really sensational experience, came as I finished praying what was then a full rosary, joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries, in Italy in September 1992.
Shortly afterwards Pope John Paul the Second decided the rosary was too short and added five mysteries of light.
They're worth the candle.
If one accepts the gospels as being true, Jesus as described in them, clearly sets an example.
He prays over the sick.
He prays for hours alone.
He prays for healings.
After he raises someone from the dead, he says: "I thank you Father that you have heard my prayer."
He teaches us how to pray by giving us the Our Father prayer itself.
When his disciples ask him why they couldn't cast out a particular demon from someone, having previously cast out any number of them, he answers: "This kind can only be cast out by prayer and fasting."
He also says: "If you have faith, you will do greater things than I have done... Ask and you will receive... Seek and you will find... Knock and the door will be opened to you."
In the Acts of the Apostles, Saint John and Saint Peter are seen praying for the sick and healing them.
If we accept these accounts, we might also accept that they imply we are being told to pray for each other.
It is what God wants us to do.
It is who God wants us to be.
It is one of the ways in which God acts in the world.
God wants us to care about each other and about everyone else.
That is the mandate for prayer.
That is why God answers prayers.
When we pray for others, we become in some measure the sort of people he wants us to be.
When we pray in order to praise God, ditto.
Ditto when we pray any and all prayers in the spirit of truth.
The Catholic understanding maintains that God continues to allow souls that have gone to him to pray for people still living a mortal life on earth.
The capacity to pray does not end with this life but continues into eternal life.
The use of relics, items associated with a saint, to pray over people, is also recorded in the New Testament.
If we accept the New Testament we needn't be too snooty about prayers accompanied by the touching of relics.
If you don't accept the New Testament, you might consider contemporary testimonies about the power of prayer.
I am constantly astonished by the number of people using anti depressants or undergoing invasive medical procedures, or dealing with appalling criminality in the world, who have never even once in their life prayed the full rosary.
Before you put drug poisons in your body, at least give the rosary a chance.
Visit a church.
Go to Lourdes.
Faith can move mountains.
Prayer is the energising voice of faith.
He gave us life.
Talk to him.
That's a prayer.