The real purpose and nominal purposes of your prayers are at variance.
Unfortunately such a suggestion will not work for an account of past-directed prayers.
If we take the similarities between the two scenarios seriously, we might be tempted to think that both prayers are impetratory.
Friars were frequently confessors and the prayers of monks were thought to be particularly powerful.
Members of the cong regation come to the house to make up a minyan so that cer tain prayers can be said.
Not only did unofficial ulama perform rituals and lead prayers; some of them, beginning in the 1960s, also offered lessons in secret to selected students.
Likewise, daily prayers would strengthen a person's attachment to religiously sanctioned values and norms.
What is needed is a formula to tell us which prayers will be answered and which declined.
