PRAYER: A CRY FOR HELP

When I was in seminary, our spiritual director used to post signs along the hallway to chapel to remind us of our spiritual “responsibilities” as I would call them. One was “RMCD” as I recall from almost 60 years ago: “Remember to Mark Chart Daily”. He used to pass out slips of papers on which we could write our personal daily and weekly spiritual exercises such as praying for loved ones, making a weekly confession, etc. Then when we accomplished the said deed, we were to mark our chart daily, if necessary.

Another sign simply read “ACTS”. It was his definition of the ingredients of prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication. Thinking back, I suspect he meant “and in that order”. As I reflect on ACTS all these years later, he was probably correct. When we pray to God, our first words should be of adoration: words of love and worship of God our Creator.

Our next step should be to confess our personal sinfulness, not that we are great sinners but certainly acknowledging we aren’t any great shakes of a saint either. Then, before we get to the Big One, we need to thank God for all many blessing of our lives even as we take so many of them for granted and/or believe that we somehow in some way deserve them.

Then comes the Big One: supplication, which, for many of us, perhaps all of us – saints among us are the exceptions – consumes most of our prayers. We beg God to help us in whatever way we, at that moment in our lives, need help. The list can be long and almost endless. Sometimes there is one issue that seems to be controlling everything else in our lives and we desperately need God’s help to resolve the problem because we certainly can’t all on our own.

Moreover, is there any time in our lives when we don’t seem to need God’s help? That help may not be because of a personal need but because someone we love needs God’s help and we are helpless to do anything about it but to pray for God’s intercession and help; and that is what we do.

When I reflect on my personal prayer life, even in those times when I follow my old spiritual director’s order, I tend to rush through the first three to get to the last one: my cry for help. When I arrive there, I spend an inordinate time explaining to God why I need God’s help in this particular instance. It is as if God has no clue why I am in need of help, no clue whatsoever!

God knows our needs before we ask. We don’t even have to ask. But, then, of course we do. It is our personal way of acknowledging, at least to ourselves, that we are powerless over so many things in our lives and that the only one who can help us through this time is God. ACTS aside, prayer is essentially a cry for God’s help. And so we pray.