Our fallen world does not want God’s presence or grace. It is content to swim in its own cesspool and convince itself that things are okay. Such a mentality has no tolerance for prayer.
Prayer is offensive to such a worldview. Prayer implies that something is missing, someone is needed, and something is beyond our own grasp. Prayer exposes the fallenness of our world. It shows us our sins. It unmasks our pride and shows us the brokenness and chaos of our world.
Prayer is the path to reality, to a true awareness of things. Prayer is an act of humility. It disguises nothing. It pretends nothing. It cleans up or lies about nothing. There is no spin to prayer. There is no deception in prayer.
Due to the sobering effect of prayer, it is viewed as an enemy by those who are arrogant and as a weakness by those who are powerful.
As believers, we have to be careful of the air we breathe. It is very easy to take on the views of the unbeliever and the secularist. The Catechism of the Catholic Church warns us: “We must also face the fact that certain attitudes deriving from the mentality of ‘this present world’ can penetrate our lives if we are not vigilant.”
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