Multiple studies over many years confirm that prayer and meditation have similar benefits to fasting: reduced stress, less anxiety, and a decrease in levels of depression. Feelings of security, compassion, and love increase by contemplating the existence of a loving God (rather than a punitive one). In fact, intense, consistent prayer can actually change pathways and structures in the brain, altering how you perceive yourself and your interactions with the world.
The same can be said for almsgiving, especially as it relates to generosity: “giving good things to others freely and abundantly.” (The Science of Generosity Project of the University of Notre Dame) A report compiled by The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley describes how acting generously activates reward pathways, making us feel good when we are generous, but there are positive physical effects:
Giving social support—time, effort, or goods—is associated with better overall health in older adults, and volunteering is associated with delayed mortality.
Studies confirm positive effects on emotional well-being as well:
For example, a meta-analysis of 37 studies of older adults found that those who volunteered reported greater quality of life; another study found that frequent helpers reported feeling greater vitality and self-esteem (but only if they chose to help of their own accord).
So it seems that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving aren’t just good for your soul but for your mental and physical health as well!
“Give! Give the love you have received to those around you. You must love with your time, your hands and your hearts. You need to share all that you have.”
—St. Teresa of Calcutta
However, as the Catechism reminds us, their ultimate purpose is conversion “in relation to oneself, to God, and to others” (1434). How do they help us do that?
Since human beings have always worshiped and prayed to God, a brief look at the history of religion and religious experiences may help to answer that question.
The History and Science of Religious Experiences
Friedrich Heiler (1892-1967), a German theologian and historian who studied the beliefs of all religions, including those of the East, found seven beliefs they shared:
- Belief in a Transcendent Being, “the holy, the divine, the Other.”
- This transcendent reality is immanent in human hearts [and] lives in human souls.
- This reality is for man the highest good, the highest truth, righteousness, goodness, and beauty.
- This reality of the Divine is ultimate love which reveals itself to men and in men.
- The way of man to God is universally the way of sacrifice.
- All high religions teach not only the way to God, but always and at the same time the way to the neighbor as well.
- Love is the most superior way to God.
Sound familiar? These characteristics stand in stark contrast to the view from the Enlightenment (and beyond) that religious belief originated in fear, ignorance, and superstition. In more recent times, the title of a book by atheist Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, captures the core of the secular attitude not only to religion but to belief in God.
So let’s turn to the idea of this “Other,” the highest good, truth, goodness, and beauty, immanent in human hearts.
The highly regarded scholar of religion, Rudolph Otto (1869-1937), named this experience of the Other the “numinous experience.” Fr. Spitzer has written extensively on this topic. He summarizes Otto’s conclusions this way:
After a comprehensive study of historical and contemporary religion, Otto concludes that most human beings have an irreducibly, non-rational experience of the numinous (the interior presence of the transcendent or divine). The “numen” (that which is experienced as transcendent) presents itself fundamentally as “wholly other”
Otto asserts strongly that the presence of the numen to individuals is the foundation of religion throughout history and the world.
So, the foundation of all religion is an experience of the reality and presence of this “Other.”
The Power of Prayer in the Numinous Experience and Neuroscience
What can science tell us about this experience?
In 1902, the psychologist William James described religious experiences as “verifiable experiences of God.” In our own time, the neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg from Thomas Jefferson University interviewed both Tibetan monks and Franciscan nuns, asking them to describe their experiences while meditating. These men and women identified several characteristics of encounters with the Divine or “wholly Other:”
- Time and space are perceived as non-existent.
- Normal rational thought processes give way to more intuitive ways of understanding.
- An experience of the presence of the sacred or the holy
- Perception of the essential meaning of things. . . resulting in ultimate freedom.
Newberg and colleagues used a neuroimaging technique known as SPECT (Single-photon emission computed tomography), which creates a 3D image of blood flow in the brain. They identified multiple areas of the brain that show increased blood perfusion during prayer and meditation. Their book, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and The Biology of Belief relates their findings in detail, emphasizing that these brain areas are associated with emotions, memory, and sensory experience. In their analysis, it becomes clear that religious experiences are fundamentally different from hallucinations or seizures. In fact, part of our brain evolved to help us distinguish between what is real, imaginary, or what comes from a dream. In other words, these encounters use the same mechanisms and pathways as any of our experiences of external reality.
The observations from Newberg’s studies align well with the writings of the saints on prayer:
- "Prayer is the place of refuge for every worry, a foundation for cheerfulness, a source of constant happiness, a protection against sadness." —St. John Chrysostom
- "We set forth our petitions before God, not in order to make known to Him our needs and desires, but rather so that we ourselves may realize that in these things it is necessary to turn to God for help" —St. Thomas Aquinas
- "Prayer is nothing else than union with God.” —St. John Vianney
- “My little children, your hearts, are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God. Through prayer we receive a foretaste of heaven and something of paradise comes down upon us” —St. John Vianney
Are Humans Naturally Religious?
In a lecture on beauty, Bishop James Conley reminded his audience, “The Greek word for man is Anthropos—which literally means “one who looks up”—an upwardly turning creature. Humans alone can look up to the stars in wonder.” Thomistic Institute Lecture, 2015.
This “looking up” reveals a persistent desire to connect with something beyond us, something larger than ourselves. Attempts to connect with the Divine have generated multiple rituals. “Worship” includes the prayers, songs, services, and readings found in multiple faith traditions. These symbolic actions are given meaning through the faith of the participants. According to philosopher Robert Adams, these actions give us an opportunity to align ourselves with transcendent Good.
A genuine love for the Good can find in symbolic expression an integration and completion that would otherwise be impossible. . . .Qualitatively limited as I inevitably am in the goodness of my life, and even in my conception of the Good, I can still name and praise a transcendent Good.
—Robert Adams
So, we offer worship to God because “this reality is for man the highest good, the highest truth, righteousness, goodness, and beauty.” As reported in an earlier post, Dr. Maria Beer Vuco, University of Oxford, believes that worship taps into “the distinctiveness of God’s majesty and the closeness of interpersonal relationships.” In her view, since God is the greatest good, then worship is a path to align us with that good. Worship actually helps us to become our truest selves and can bring about union, even friendship, with the Divine.
But friendship and union with our neighbor are deeply connected to connection with the Divine. Returning for a moment to Heiler’s list of characteristics shared by all religions: “All high religions teach not only the way to God but always and at the same time the way to the neighbor as well.”
Scripture reveals how these can be related. Jesus Himself links the love of God and neighbor in the two greatest commandments:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
—Mark 12:30-31
But there is also a relationship between fasting and almsgiving (taking care of our neighbor!) :
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice…to set the oppressed free. . . Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter–when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
—Isaiah 58:6-7
As your Lenten journey continues using the three pillars of Lent—fasting, prayer, and almsgiving—may your mind and heart be stretched as you strive for holiness!
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
—G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
Unlocking the Power of Prayer Through Science and Faith
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