Paid Prayers

3. He then said to his disciples in the presence of all the people listening to him: “Guard yourselves against the scribes, who walk around in long robes to show themselves, who love to be greeted in the public squares and to occupy the best seats in the synagogues and feasts; who, under the pretext of long prayers, devour widows’ houses.  For doing so, such persons will receive a harsher condemnation.” (Lk. 20:45-47; Mk. 12:38-40; Mt. 23: 14)

4.  Jesus also said: Do  not  make anyone pay for your prayers; do not do like the scribes who “under  the pretext  of long prayers, devour  widows’ houses,” which means to seize their wealth. Prayer is an act of charity, an impulse of the heart; to be paid for a prayer addressed to God for someone else is to make oneself a paid intermediary. Prayer, in this case, is a formula, whose length is in proportion to the amount of money it yields. Well then, one of two things applies: either God measures or does not measure his blessings by the number of words. If many words are necessary, why say only a few of them or none at all for those who cannot pay? This is a lack of charity. If only one is enough, then more are pointless. So why make them pay? It is an abuse of trust.

God  does not  sell the benefits he grants. Why, then, would someone who is not even the benefits’ distributor, and who cannot guarantee their obtainment, demand payment for a request that might not be answered? God cannot make an act of clemency, goodness or justice that is requested from the divine mercy be dependent on a sum of money; otherwise, the consequence would be that if the sum were not paid or if it were insufficient, God’s  clemency, goodness and justice would be withheld. Reason, common sense and logic state that God, the absolute perfection, could not delegate to imperfect individuals the right to put a price on divine justice. God’s justice is like the sun; it is for everybody, for the rich as much as the poor. If the selling of favors by an earthly sovereign is regarded as immoral, is it any more legitimate to sell those of the sovereign of the universe?

Paid  prayers have another  drawback: those  who  buy them very often believe that they themselves  do not have to pray because they have given their money. We know that spirits are touched by the fervor of the thought of those who take an interest in them; what could be the fervor of someone who arranged for a third party to pray for them by paying for it? What is the fervor of this third party when he or she delegates this task to another, and that one yet to another, and so on and so forth? Does that not reduce the prayer’s effectiveness to the value of a particular currency?