"But what happens in true petitionary prayer when it is part of genuine religion? Human beings face the incomprehensible plan of their existence, which they accept as at once incomprehensible and yet as originating in the wisdom and love of God; however it may turn out, whether it brings life or death. people then have a sense of themselves, with their own identity and vital impulses, as willed by God, without waiting to produce or force an intelligible synthesis between their vital impulses and the plan of their existence. And so they say Yes to the incomprehensibility of God and to their own will to live, without wanting to know how the two fit together. The unity of the two, which is not something that we can create, is petitionary prayer, since it is only prayer if it says radically, "Your will, not mine", and it would not be petitionary prayer if it did not dare to ask God for something which we had thought of ourselves. Petitionary prayer is thus simply actualising the incomprehensibility of human existence which, down to the last fibre, comes from God alone and goes out to him, and yet is such that it can hold its own before God and not be destroyed."