His desire to bestow His graces upon us, or the necessity we are under of asking them if we wish to obtain them. The holy Fathers also continually exhort us to pray. And to speak the truth, I complain of preachers, of confessors and spiritual writers, because I see that neither preachers, nor confessors, nor spiritual writers speak as much as they ought of the great means of prayer. I have, therefore, written at length on this subject in so many of my little works; and when I preach I do nothing else than say and repeat: Pray! pray! if you wish to be saved."
Prayer, as we have seen, is both easy and effective; and, nevertheless, numerous are the complaints that our prayers are not heard. St. James thus answers these complaints: "You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss" (James iv. 3). St. Augustine says that there are three principal reasons why our prayers are not granted by God. Some people, he says, are unfit to be heard when they pray, because far from being agreeable to God, they are hateful to Him. Others are refused what they pray for, because they ask for unsuitable and even for dangerous things. Others, finally, are not heard because their prayers lack some of the qualities of a good prayer. We should pray for temporal favors
