Intercessory Prayer

A friend inquired,

If you have  no trouble understanding petitionary prayer, why should you have a problem understanding intercessory prayer? 

Prayer is hard to understand. In a legal proceeding if my testimony can exonerate some one, I see the relevance. When I pray for you, does this imply I have some grounds for defending or recommending you morally? I don't think so. Is prayer a plea for mercy more than justice? Don't know. If I pray for someone fighting cancer, am I pleading for mercy? Well, sort of.

A Substack entry of mine opens as follows:

I tend to look askance at petitionary prayer for material benefits. In such prayer one asks for mundane benefits whether for oneself, or for another, as in the case of intercessory prayer. In some of its forms it borders on idolatry and superstition, and in its crassest forms it crosses over. A skier who prays for snow, for example, makes of God a supplier of petty, ego-enhancing benefits, a sort of Cosmic Candy Man, as does the nimrod who prays to win the lottery.  Worse still is one who prays for the death of a business rival.

Perhaps not all petitionary prayer for mundane benefits is objectionable.  Some of it simply reflects, excusably,  our misery and indigence.  (Did not Christ himself engage in it at Gethsemane?)  But much of it is objectionable.  What then should I say about the "Our Father," which, in the fourth of its six petitions, appears precisely to endorse petitionary prayer for material  benefits?

Now let's consider my friend's cancer example. Suppose you have stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and I pray to God for you. That would be a case of petitionary prayer in its intercessory form.  I could pray for your recovery or I could pray that God grant you the spiritual strength bear up well and accept your coming demise with equanimity as a sort of purgatory on earth and thus as an opportunity to atone for your sins and put your spiritual affairs in order.  It seems obvious to me that I should do the latter and not the former, especially if the friend is say 60+ years old and has had a good life.

Would it not be utterly absurd, and indeed morally offensive, to call upon God to grant a few more years of life to the old coot so he could waste more time chasing women, hitting little white balls into holes, and piling up  loot? I would even go so far as to argue that it is metaphysically offensive. After all, if the God of classical theism exists, then everything else is next-to-nothing in comparison ontologically (being-wise) and axiologically (value-wise).  This is is traditional RCC doctrine, not that the likes of Begoglio & Co, understand it or could explain it.

My friend asked, "If I pray for someone fighting cancer, am I pleading for mercy?" In some cases, but not in every case.  In the case I just sketched, I am not praying that God have mercy on the cancer victim's soul, or that God intervene in the course of nature  to stop the metastasis of the malignant cells.  I am praying that God spiritually fortify the soon-to-be-dead man so that he can make good spiritual use of his suffering and naturally inevitable death.