Some people have difficulty understanding our Catholic practice of praying to the saints but have no difficulty in asking other people for help or favours when they are in need and find no other solution. Traditional Catholic doctrine teaches that there are essentially four types or purposes of prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, supplication (or intercession). This basic doctrine may be refined in many different ways according to further teaching on prayer. Contemplation and meditation may combine with any of these basic purposes: we adore God in contemplation. Meditating on God's many gifts will lead to thanksgiving.

Similarly, the prayer of intercession may take other forms besides asking for something. The disciples simply tell Jesus about Peter's mother-in-law being ill: they do not ask for any specific favour, yet Jesus acts immediately to cure her.

In the sequence of Mark's Gospel, Jesus has already worked a miracle in the synagogue at Capernaum. The disciples may have expected Jesus to work a miracle for Peter's mother in law but they did not ask for one. They left it up to Jesus