Coming to pray together and coming together to pray.

The above statement as highlighted by D’Costa in his article on Interreligious prayer is an important one as it clearly distinguishes inter-religious prayer from the multi-religious prayer. Reclining to most of the church’s documents and scholars’ thoughts in relation to John Paul II Assisi prayer of 1986, a lot questions have been raised regarding why inter-religious prayer rather than the multi-religious prayer or vice versa. Thus, in line with the ideas raised by the many of the church’s documents and the views of some thinkers and scholars, it is observed that many favor the multi-religious prayer. For many of them, including Ratzinger who later became the Pope Benedict XVI, the possibility of interreligious prayer is dicey as they believe that it could amount of the monopolization of one religious faith against the other. Hence, they were of the view that mutireligious prayer should should be adopted as it is expressive of shared concern of different religions regarding issues that likely to threaten the peace, unity, and justice in the world. It is also an expression of the point of commonality among all the religions. It also expresses tolerance, love of neighbor, and respect for the integrity of other religions. However,Cragg who seems to be a lone voice regarding interreligious prayer, though he did not reject the grounds on which the multireligious prayer is favored, but raises questions in what should have been the contents of the interreligious prayer and who should the prayer be directed to? He also brings to our knowledge on the power of the Holy Spirit on inspiration of prayer. From this backdrop he did not say yes or no to multireligious prayer, but he is concerned about the co-intentionality which without it interreligious prayer will degenerate into monopolization. Given all these highlights I think it is important to know why prayer should be talked about at first instance and being aware of that will help to guide all the religions to pray for a common intention which should equally express the contribution of all the religions to the phenomenon of the common good. In the context of this I believe that we will always be making a head way in relations among all the religions.