Bestiary: The Praying Mantis

The Praying Mantis is a large insect with a fearful visage. Its bulbous eyes never blink. It is called a “Praying” mantis because of the position of its segmented arms, which appear to be raised to God as the faithful’s are during their pious recitations.

By appearance, the Mantis is constantly at prayer, as Catholics should be, but as a symbol, it better represents the Pharisee than the truly pious. The Mantis’s “prayer” is wholly external, done solely for its own benefit, without an upright heart that seeks after what is good in the sight of God.

This creature, despite appearances, is not tranquilly lost in prayer; rather its focus is earthly, since it is actually watching for its prey, for unsuspecting little bugs to devour with ferocious gluttony. Its pious arms hide serrated blades that lunge forward like lightning to snatch any prey that ventures too close to it. Without scruple, the Mantis mauls its innocent prey until nothing remains.

The Pharisee’s descendants by the flesh are Jewish, but his spirit lives on even in the Church. Pharisees, like the Mantis, pray only to be seen, so they may receive the undeserved benefits this pseudo-piety brings. For rank, respect, and money they pray enthusiastically, but without devotion, solely to slake their pride. As the Mantis devours the innocent, so the Pharisees in the fold lure the simple faithful, who admire him, only to take advantage of them in their guileless lack of suspicion.

Possibly, God made the Mantis so that all who see it may know that we must pray “in spirit and truth.” In the Mantis we witness a merely bodily prayer, which is no prayer at all, and worse, a prayer that is hypocritical and evil. It is the motive which makes prayer good, and prayer which cloaks a bad motive is detestable before the Lord.

The huge eyes of the Mantis face their prey and not the Heavens. From this we discover the remedy for hypocritical prayers, which is not to cease praying, as though our ill-will has forever polluted our prayers. Rather, we are to pray more intently than we did in our hypocrisy, focusing the eyes of our souls not on sordid gain, but on the Holy Face, Wounds, and Precious Blood of Jesus, that by the sight of Him we may renounce our impious appetites and turn our prayer, once perverse, into the surest means of grace and salvation.

But, from the Mantis, are we to understand that any prayer for temporal benefit is hypocritical, sinful, and detestable? By no means! We must recall that the lessons of the natural world are not precise or complete. Observe the Mantis again. The weapons that mantis uses to kill its prey are hidden in its arms, concealed by its “prayer,” and that is why it is such a good symbol of the hypocrite. But consider what plowshares these swords could become. They could be used for climbing, for defending against predators, or for cutting leaves to eat, earthly purposes that in no way symbolize sinful gains, and if they were used those purposes, the mantis would be a poor metaphor for the Pharisee, with his vanity, pride, and avarice? There is no symbolic malice in these good uses, and so we would find a different lesson in the Mantis, perhaps about how those talents some have in matters of war should not remain idle in times of peace.

As we have Earthly needs, we should pray for them, but for sordid gain and vanity, we should never pray, if we want to bear the image of God, and not of the Pharisaic Mantis.