An imagined Bible study gathered in conversation
Who Am I Supposed to Pray To?
The Father, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit? A question from our community opens a conversation about prayer, belonging, and the God who hears us.
If we were a brick-and-mortar parish, you would almost certainly know Liz.
And if you spend any time in the comments here, you probably already do.
Liz has been part of this community for a long time. She has supported this work, helped make this a place where people feel welcome, and brought her own faith into the conversation. She also leads a women’s Bible study, and this week she sent me a question that had come up in her group.
Who should I pray to? God the Father? Jesus? The Holy Spirit?
Some of the women haven’t had much opportunity to learn about the Trinity. They’re discussing the Holy Spirit this Thursday, and Liz wondered whether I might write something that would help them in their prayer lives.
“For you, Liz? Anything,” I told her. Then I asked when they were meeting, because I wanted her to have something to bring with her.
Before we get to her question, I want to say something about that exchange.
Message From the Margins is not just “Father Pops Off,” although I concede that on certain mornings the distinction might be difficult to establish.
We are a community of faith. The people who gather here have lives that extend far beyond whatever I happen to be writing about. You are caring for families, trying to forgive people, sitting with grief, teaching Bible studies, and finding your way back to prayer after years when you weren’t sure anyone was listening. What happens in those lives belongs here.
So when someone brings a question like this, we can put our plans aside and give it our attention. We have something to learn together.
And Liz has brought us an absolutely fantastic question.
You can spend your whole life in church, make the sign of the cross thousands of times, and still sit down to pray and wonder whom you’re supposed to be talking to. Perhaps everyone else seems to know, so you keep the question to yourself.
Well. Let’s talk about it.
The first answer is the one I hope you’ll remember if you get distracted halfway through this essay and never make it back: you may pray to the Father, to Jesus, or to the Holy Spirit.
God Almighty is not going to send you to voicemail because you didn’t go through the approved channels.
If you have been talking to Jesus every night for forty years, please don’t spend this morning worrying that those conversations should have been addressed to someone else. And if the only prayer you can manage today is “God, help me,” you have said enough to begin.
There is, however, a great deal of beauty beneath that simple reassurance. Scripture gives us several ways to understand what happens when we pray, and spending a little time with them might change how we experience something we already do.
In Ephesians 2:18, we are told that through Christ we have access in one Spirit to the Father. Notice the movement: through the Son, in the Spirit, to the Father. In its original setting, this is part of the announcement that people once separated from one another have been brought into a shared household. The language of access belongs to a passage about belonging.
That is a lovely place to begin an answer to Liz.
Prayer draws us into a relationship God has already opened to us. The Father welcomes us; the Son brings us into his own relationship with the Father; the Spirit enables our response. We aren’t standing at a distance, hoping to attract the attention of someone who has yet to decide whether we matter.
The Letter to the Hebrews approaches this through Jesus’ humanity. Our high priest understands human weakness. Because of him, we can approach God’s throne with confidence and seek mercy and help when we need them.
I find that immensely consoling. The things we sometimes regard as disqualifications for prayer—our exhaustion, our vulnerability, the trouble we’re having holding ourselves together—are precisely the circumstances in which we are invited to come.
Then Paul takes us somewhere even more intimate. In Romans 8, the Spirit enables us to call upon God as Father and helps us when we do not know how to pray. Even our inability to find words can become a place of divine encounter.
Think of the times you have sat in silence because the situation was too much for a sentence. You wanted to pray for someone, but you could hardly bear to name what was happening. Paul makes room for that experience within the life of prayer. The Spirit’s help reaches into the very place where speech fails.
This is especially important for Liz’s group, because the Holy Spirit can seem elusive. We have the Gospel stories of Jesus, and we have some human experience, however complicated, of what the word “father” means. The Spirit may feel harder to approach.
Yet in Paul’s account, the Spirit is already intimately involved in our praying.
St. Basil the Great, writing in the fourth century, describes our coming to know God as a movement in the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. His account helps us recognize the Spirit as the divine person who enables our encounter with God. We can address the Spirit directly, and we can also begin to notice the Spirit’s presence in the desire that brought us to prayer at all.
John’s Gospel brings another tenderness to this. Jesus promises his disciples the Spirit and tells them, “I will not leave you orphans.” These words are spoken as he prepares them for his departure, when they are facing a future they cannot yet understand. The promise of the Spirit belongs to his assurance that they will not be abandoned. (John 14:16–18)
Later, he invites them to ask the Father in his name. A few verses afterward comes a sentence worth lingering over: “For the Father himself loves you.” (John 16:23–27)
That matters when we imagine what it means to pray through Jesus. We can sometimes picture him trying to soften the attitude of a stern Father, as though the mercy we find in the Son were somehow absent from the Father. Jesus’ own words invite us to trust the Father’s love.
Praying in Jesus’ name means bringing our requests into our relationship with him, learning to desire what he desires and entrusting ourselves to the Father he reveals. The familiar words at the end of a prayer can express that belonging. They have no magic of their own.
None of this gives us a formula for securing the outcome we want. Faithful people pray with their whole hearts and still endure terrible losses. An unanswered longing is no evidence that you addressed the wrong person of the Trinity.
If you want to see these relationships expressed in ordinary Catholic worship, listen closely the next time you’re at Mass.
The great Eucharistic Prayer is addressed to the Father. We offer our thanksgiving through Christ, and we ask for the action of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts and upon those who will share in them. Our own lives are gathered into that offering. The prayer teaches us something about who we are together before God. (The Eucharistic Prayer)
We also speak directly to Jesus. When we pray to the Lamb of God and ask for mercy and peace, he is the one we address. And the Church’s prayer has long included that brief, direct invocation, “Come, Holy Spirit.” You can pray it while sitting quietly before a difficult conversation, or when you’re trying to discern what love requires of you. (Catechism §2671)
These patterns have meaning. Paying attention to them can deepen our participation in worship and enrich the language available to us at home. There is room for both a prayer received from centuries of Christian practice and the words that come to you while washing a coffee cup.
Catholics will quite reasonably ask where Mary, the saints, and the angels fit into all this.
When we ask for their intercession, we are asking them to pray for us. We worship God, and we trust that the saints share in God’s life and continue to care for those still making their way through this one. Their intercession is part of the Church’s understanding of the communion of saints. (Catechism §2683)
There is something familiar here. We already know what it is to ask another person to hold us in prayer. Catholic faith gives that fellowship a reach beyond death. Asking Mary to pray for you expresses confidence that the mother of Jesus belongs to a living communion of love.
We should also be clear about the distinction: Mary and the saints are creatures beloved by God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are God.
And there is only one God.
The three persons are truly distinct, and each is fully God. We are not dividing divinity into thirds or imagining three separate gods with different dispositions toward us. Christian faith holds together the real distinction of the persons and the complete unity of the divine nature. It is a mystery we can spend a lifetime entering without exhausting it. (Catechism §§253–255)
For our purposes this morning, that means you do not have to calculate which person will be most sympathetic to your request.
There is no misdirected mail bin in heaven.
Every prayer is heard by the one God. Whatever grace we receive comes from that same God, whose love is never divided against itself.
One of the most beautiful expressions of this appears in a prayer by St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. She begins, “O my God, Trinity whom I adore,” and goes on to address Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Father with extraordinary intimacy.
Reading her prayer, you encounter a woman who has made a home within the mystery. She turns toward each person with affection, asking to be drawn more deeply into divine life. Her awareness of the distinctions gives her more to love, more to say, more to receive.
I think Elizabeth would understand someone who says, “I know what the Church teaches, Father, but when I pray, I always find myself talking to Jesus.”
There may be a whole history contained in that sentence. Perhaps the stories of Jesus gave you your first sense that God could be gentle. Perhaps you encountered him in suffering, or found that imagining yourself beside him helped you speak honestly about something you had never been able to say aloud.
Someone else may find profound comfort in addressing the Father. Another may have developed the habit of asking the Holy Spirit for wisdom, courage, or the patience to remain loving when being loving is difficult.
Those affections deserve reverence. They can be part of the holy, mystical work taking place in a very ordinary human life. You needn’t possess an impressive vocabulary to have a deep relationship with God.
And relationships grow. The prayer that sustained you at twenty may acquire a different depth at sixty. You may find yourself drawn toward words that once felt unfamiliar. Allow some room for discovery.
St. Teresa of Ávila describes prayer in terms of friendship: spending time with the One we know loves us. There is a tremendously beautiful spiritual education in such a simple thought. Friendship asks for attention, honesty, patience, and the willingness to return. Over time, we discover more about the one we love, and we become more capable of receiving love ourselves.
Of course, you may read all this talk of affection and feel that your own prayer is rather bare. You show up, say what you can, and feel very little.
You belong in this conversation, too. Warmth is a gift when it comes; its absence does not make your faithfulness worthless. Sometimes the most honest prayer available is simply the willingness to stay for a moment longer.
So, Liz, thank you. Thank you for asking on behalf of the women in your group, and for giving the rest of us an opportunity to consider something we may have wondered about for years.
I hope you and your group find both freedom and something worth exploring here. You can pray to the Father. You can speak to Jesus. You can call upon the Holy Spirit. You can learn from the Church’s worship, borrow words from the saints, and bring your own halting sentences into the company of theirs. You can even sit in silence.
And Now, I would love to hear from the rest of you: when you begin to pray, whom do you find yourself addressing? Has that changed as your life has changed?
That is a conversation worth having in a community like ours.
For now, perhaps set aside a quiet moment before the day gets away from you. Address God in the way that comes most naturally. Say what is on your heart, including whatever remains confusing.
You do not have to wait until you understand everything to spend time with the One who loves you.
And Let Us Pray…
Loving Father,
Receive the prayers we bring this morning,
including the ones we have kept to ourselves
because we could not find the words.
Help us trust that we are welcome in Your presence.
Jesus, You have shared our human life
and know how much courage an honest prayer can require.
Stay close to those who are grieving,
those who feel forgotten,
and those who are beginning to speak to You
again after a long silence.
Holy Spirit, help us listen.
Give us patience with our questions
and tenderness toward the questions of others.
When we cannot tell what to ask for, sustain us in the quiet.
Holy Trinity, one God,
draw this community more deeply into Your love.
May the time we spend with You
make us more attentive to the people You have entrusted to our care.
Amen.
And Now It’s Your Turn…
What has helped you feel at home in prayer—a familiar prayer, a passage of Scripture, a person who made room for your questions? I would love to hear about it in the comments.
And if Liz’s question has brought another one to mind, you are welcome to ask. You may give someone else the courage to say, “I’ve wondered that, too.”
If someone you know has wondered whether they’re praying “the right way,” please send them this reflection. It might give you a lovely conversation to have together.
A Word Before We Part…
I wonder whether you’ve been carrying a question of your own—something you’ve wanted to ask about God, prayer, or the Church, without quite knowing where you could ask it honestly.
You are welcome to bring it here. That invitation is part of belonging to this community, whatever your subscription status.
As I look toward 2027, I want us to keep making room for mornings like this: a reader asks a thoughtful question, we set aside our plans, Father stays up late geeking out and writing, and all of us have an opportunity to grow. I believe this community is worth sustaining, and keeping this work going will require your help.
If a paid subscription is within your means, please consider becoming a supporter. Your contribution helps provide the time and resources this ministry needs, including the work we share freely.
Your Brother in Christ,
