God does not delay to hear our prayers because He has no mind to give; but that, by enlarging our desires, He may give us the more largely.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that God's delays in answering prayers are purposeful, meant to broaden our desires for greater blessings.
Anselm of Canterbury suggests that the perceived delays in God's response to our prayers are not due to a lack of willingness to provide, but rather a divine strategy to expand our understanding and desires. By taking time to fulfill our requests, God encourages us to seek deeper and more meaningful blessings, ultimately leading to a greater fulfillment of our hopes and aspirations.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the nature of faith and prayer.
A Prayer of Anselm My God, I pray that I may so know you and love you that I may rejoice in you. And if I may not do so fully in this life let me go steadily on to the day when I come to that fullness . . . Let me receive That which you promised through your truth, that my joy may be full.
For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe this: unless I believe, I will not understand.
Spare me through your mercy, do not punish me through your justice.
Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will and you have nothing that could be saved.
I believe in order that I may understand.
A single Mass offered for oneself during life may be worth more than a thousand celebrated for the same intention after death.
In some departments of our daily life, in which we imagine ourselves free agents, we are ruled by dictators exercising great power.
Rights are best guarded when each person and group guards for others those rights they wish guarded for themselves.
At the core of every religion is the belief that we care for everyone....It's not too late to help a neighbor in need and to do it with the swiftness, expertise, generosity and love that resides in the best of who we are.
For the rest, they shall represent the other Free Peoples of the World: Elves, Dwarves, and Men, Legolas shall be for the Elves; and Gimli son of Gloin for the Dwarves. They are willing to go at least to the passes of the Mountains, and maybe beyond. For Men you shall have Aragorn son of Arathorn, for the Ring of Isildur concerns him closely.
To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.
There's nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.
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