Fr. Ebido explains 'Praying in our helplessness' - ITREALMS

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Thursday, First Week of Lent B (February 25/2021) 

Your Daily Blessing: May God answer all your petitions from Mount Zion! Amen.

Read Esther C:12,14-16, 23-25; Matt 7:7-12; pray Psalm 137.

Narration: I assume that we are all familiar with the experience of praying for something without getting any clear answers. It is more painful when you read in the Gospel, like today that says, “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock, and the door shall be opened for you; for whoever asks receives and the one who seeks finds…” I cannot presume I can answer this dilemma in a few lines reflection. 

But let us observe Esther in the first reading. She was helpless because she was going to meet the King without being summoned, and may lose her life as a result. Even more terrible is that her enemy is beside the king, a person very close to the kind both in power and friendship. But Esther did not kneel in prayer to ask for merely material gain, but for justice and the life of her people. She asked for the virtue of courage for herself.

 

Praying in our times of helplessness is one that hardly ever fails. There is perhaps nothing that moves God like our helplessness. We need to recognize our ‘helplessness’ as a power for getting unfailing results from God.

You only have to know how to humble yourself and ask unceasingly for help. St. Augustine says, “he hears even sinners” or else he would not ask us to forgive our enemies. If he expects us to do that, he the father of all goodness would hear the prayer of helpless sinners like he did the publican. But we have to ask for things he promises and commands.

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In other words, apart from safety from our enemies like Esther, and necessities of life, ask above all for the things that lead us to be better persons, kind, loving, and holy people. Never relent on these, for “what is long looked for is sweeter when obtained, and it is that which is cheap that is obtained at once.” God delays to give so that you may value it when you receive it.

 

PRAYER: Dear Lord, I am so helpless and needy that sometimes I feel like you have also abandoned me. Please come speedily to my help in this particular need (mention it).

🙏🏽©️Fr Augustine Ebido, O.P.