Answer. Since our Lord Jesus Christ, having said in prayer, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me" (Mt 26:39), then added, "Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done" (Lk 22:42), one must know first of all that we are not permitted to ask for everything we desire. Nor do we in every case know how to ask for what is beneficial: "We do not know what to pray for as we ought" (Rom 8:26).
Therefore requests must be made with great circumspection, in accordance with the will of God. Those who are not heard must know that either patience is needed, or an intensification of prayer, according to the Lord's parable "that men ought always to pray and not lose heart" (Lk 18:1), and according to what the Lord says elsewhere: "Because of his persistence he will rise and give him as much as he needs" (Lk 11:8).
Or correction and diligence are also needed, according to what God said to certain people through the prophet: "When you stretch out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you. Even when you multiply prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean," and so forth (Isa 1:15-16 and following).
Believers should not doubt that even now many have hands "full of blood." This is clear from the judgment God pronounced upon the one commanded to announce to the people, who kept silence. He said that the "blood" of the sinner would be required from the hands of the "watchman" (Ezek 33:6).
Being assured of the truth and certainty of this, the Apostle said: "I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:26-27). If one who merely keeps silence is shown to be guilty of the blood of sinners, what must be said of those who cause others to stumble by what they do or by what they say?
Sometimes a request is not fulfilled because of the unworthiness of the one who asks. This happened with David, who prayed to build the House of God. He was left aside, not because he was alien to pleasing God, but because he was not judged worthy of this work.
Jeremiah remained unheard because of the sins of those for whom he prayed. Often, too, because through negligence we have missed the time in which the request should have been made, we later prove to be asking untimely and in vain.
Concerning the words, "Three times I besought the Lord that it might depart from me" (2 Cor 12:8), one must know that there are many different causes of external and bodily conditions. God either sends them or permits them according to a divine economy more important than deliverance from those conditions.
Therefore, if someone was able to know that he needed to be freed from distress by petition, he made the request and was heard, like the two blind men in the Gospel, the ten lepers, and many others.
But if someone did not know the reason for which he fell into temptation, since often one must by patience reach the goal for which the temptation was sent upon him, and he asks to be delivered from distress when it must be endured to the end, he is not heard. This is because such a request does not agree with the purpose of God's love for mankind.
The words, "If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven" (Mt 18:19), explain this very passage. For the discourse concerns the one reproving a sinner and the one reproved.
Since God does not will "the death of the sinner, but that the sinner turn from his way and live" (Ezek 33:11), if the one reproved is contrite in soul and agrees with the intention of the one reproving him concerning any matter. That is, concerning any sin, then whatever forgiveness they ask will be granted them by God, who loves mankind.
But if the one reproved does not agree with the one reproving him, there is not forgiveness but binding, according to what is added: "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven" (Mt 18:18). This fulfills the familiar judgment: "If he refuses even to hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector" (Mt 18:17).
THEOSIS