Why Do You Pray?
excerpt from my novel The Name of Hero
“Why do you pray?” Sasha asked his mother. She was kneeling in front of an icon of Christ as she always did before going up to bed. He was on the brink of manhood.
She glared up at him, then squeezed her eyes shut, trying to concentrate again on her prayer.
He had just passed his last exam in geography, his worst subject. Proud of himself, he would soon be out on his own, away from his despotic mother. He had an urge to provoke her, to arouse her martyred wrath. But despite himself, he would miss her and the simple pattern of her rewards and punishments, the certainty of her disapproval when he broke her rules.
“Why do you pray?” he persisted.
She opened her eyes, pursed her lips, and heaved a sigh of disappointment. “Have I raised a heathen? Don’t you believe in God?”
“No,” he surprised himself with his answer. He observed all the forms of religion, including prayer. But since the typhoid death of his sister Lilia, he had avoided thinking about God.
Lilia and he had squabbled often. He teased her; she retaliated. Through their running battles they grew close, testing themselves against one another, anticipating one another’s responses. Then she was gone. It was as if he had been standing in front of a mirror, showing off his abilities. Then, suddenly, the mirror was gone and he was standing before an endless dark chasm.
For days he had prayed to God to bring her back or to wake him from this nightmare.
Then he had asked for a sign that there was a God. But silence was the only answer. He had cursed God and all of creation. He had cursed Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He had cursed the Church and the priests and all believers. And he had dared God to strike him dead for such blasphemy, as he knelt, trembling, beside his bed, cursing God innocently, in the humble posture of prayer; saying he didn’t believe in God, but fully expecting at any moment to be struck by a bolt of lightning.
There was no lightning. But he continued his ritual of evening prayers, never asking himself, as he asked his mother now, “Why do you pray? Do you expect that God is going to give you something? that He’s going to do something for you?”
“No,” she answered. He was shocked that she took his question seriously. He had expected her to attack him verbally, as she had so often with far less provocation. But instead, she sank into self-reflection, as if his question had awakened old memories. She looked old and defenseless. He had never thought of her as old before. He had never seen her with her guard down like this. He was used to her using her diminutive size and presumed frailty as a weapon. She manipulated people by making them pity her. She was well practiced at assuming the look of a martyr, and she did so with finesse and authority. But now the muscles of her face hung more loosely than he had ever seen before. She was an active, dynamic woman in her early fifties. But for the moment, the energy was gone from her face. She just looked old.
“Then why do you pray?” he persisted.
“I suppose … because I’m weak… because I’ll die.”
Sasha continued, “But I remember when we were in Switzerland, at Father’s grave.” His mother was clearly shaken. He knew his words were hurting her, but still he kept up this line of questioning. “You brought Meta and me back to visit the grave, years after he had died. You asked a Catholic priest to say a prayer at his grave, because Father had been Catholic. The priest refused. He said Father wasn’t Catholic enough because he had married an Orthodox woman and let the children be raised Orthodox. You cried and told him that his prayers weren’t worth anything, that prayers hadn’t kept Father alive, that no prayers were worth anything. And yet every night you still pray. Can you tell me why?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, bewildered as he had never seen her before. “Whatever happens to me, I always want to pray…to talk to God… I can’t imagine living without praying. I suppose even animals pray.”
They were both silent for a while. Then she continued. “I remember a conversation I had with an old priest when Anatole, the man I was betrothed to, died, just a week before we were to be married, and I believe he said almost the same words to me When I returned years later, when your father died. I was numb, empty.
“The priest asked me what was wrong.
“I answered, ‘Death.’
“‘Is that all?’ he asked.
“‘That there is death. The fact of death.”
“‘Yes, it is just a fact, just a fact. Facts you find in the outside world. They can be proved and disproved. They can change. Unlike faith. Faith you find inside yourself, beyond change, beyond proof, beyond reason. Reason sees only change and difference. It can only deal with distinctions — separating and combining to arrive at ‘understanding.’
“‘There is no end to the number of facts. But there is only one faith.
“‘The truth of facts we call ‘pravda.’
“‘The truth of faith we call ‘istina.’
“‘To seek oneness with the unchanging truth that is within you is to pray.’
Sasha’s mother continued, “So I prayed then. I shut my eyes and shut out the world and fell into deep prayer, for hours, remembering the context of all the times I had prayed before, the smell of incense, the feel of a priest’s hands on my head as a child, the tones, not the words, of chanting. When I came out of it, Anatole was still dead, your father was still dead, but I was at peace with myself and had the strength to do all the day-to-day things that had to be done. I believe that praying puts me in touch with an inner reservoir of strength. Praying is like dipping a bucket into a deep well within ourselves, hoping to bring up some of the water of life.”
