Stalking the Ten-Pronged Divine Nod
by Elizabeth Scalia - September 2, 2007
Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic.com, the leading online journal of Catholic faith, culture, and politics.
Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To: Divine Answers to Life's Most Difficult Problems
Anthony DeStefano, Doubleday, $18.95, 208 pages
Does God answer prayers, or do we—by ardently pursuing our heart's desires—answer our own prayers, gift and bless ourselves?
That is a question anyone reading Anthony DeStefano's slim volume Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To might instinctively pose, and with some justification. The question could be called a subtext to the book's stated premise, a subconscious subtext answered well, but too discreetly.
Anyone suspicious of the "gospels of prosperity" that routinely bubble up from the bottom of Christianity's thick stew, or who is disinclined to participate in this year's magic peace-and-prosperity formula known as The Secret, would be justified in looking askance at DeStefano's latest; it promises Divine Answers to Life's Most Difficult Problems in under 208 pages.
The title and promise almost invite thoughts of Elmer Gantrian hucksterism, seeming as they do to play on the needs of the guileless and the simplistic—those possessing easy hearts and open wallets—who too often succumb to the lures of fast-solution infomercials. And yet Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To has a great deal to offer Christians of all stripes; still, the flashy "product" vibe could well put off those fastidious readers who want their theology served with a side of intellectual rigor and dignity.
That is a shame, because if such a reader can move past the image of big-haired, over-smiling opportunism the title provokes, he or she will be amply rewarded. Ten Prayers is a book that helps us to remember what we have always known but, in the noise of the world, have perhaps forgotten: that faith is a gift God wants to bestow—that if we ask to be a blessing to others, God will answer with the Divine Nod. That God will never outdo us in generosity; that God is merciful. That even our most awful sufferings will come to an end, and that negative situations often bring about surprising positives.
We know these truths—Christ and His saints from Augustine to Mother Teresa have taught them again and again—thus DeStefano's Ten Prayers may seem too obvious to some while others might sniff, "What a tease! Of course God will answer those prayers; those are the prayers that we help God answer! What about the bigger, more complicated prayers on issues about which we have absolutely no control?"
DeStefano ably demonstrates that if the reader earnestly makes these prayers, the mysteries and complexities of the "bigger" prayers become, while still mysterious, much less complicated. He has done a good job of grouping these necessary truths into a useful whole, enabling the reader to easily call them to mind as a sort of reassuring "ten commandments of prayer."
