Humbly asked [God] to remove our shortcomings.
—Step 7 of the Twelve Steps
This week’s meditations continue to explore the wisdom of the Gospels and the Twelve Steps. Father Richard responds to the perennial question, “Why do we pray?”:
If God already knows what we need before we ask, and God actually cares about us more than we care about ourselves, then why do both Step 7 and Jesus say, each in their own way: “Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7)? Are we trying to talk God into things? Does the group with the most and the best prayers win? Is prayer of petition just another way to get what we want, or to get God on our side?
This is the mystery of asking. Why is it good to ask, and what really happens in prayers of petition or intercession? Why is it that Jesus both tells us to ask and then says, “Your Father already knows what you need, so do not babble on like the pagans do” (Matthew 6:7–8)?
I believe prayer is a symbiotic relationship with life and with God, a synergy which creates a result larger than the exchange itself. We ask not to change God, but to change ourselves. We pray to form a living relationship, not to get things done. (That is why Jesus says all prayers are answered, which does not appear to be true, according to the evidence!) God knows that we need to pray to keep the symbiotic relationship moving and growing. Prayer is not a way to try to control God, or even to get what we want.
Prayers of intercession or petition are one way of situating our life within total honesty and structural truth. We are all forever beggars before God and the universe. We can never engineer or guide our own transformation or conversion. If we try, it will be a self-centered and well-controlled version of conversion, with most of our preferences and addictions still fully in place, but now well-disguised.
So, Step 7 says that we must “humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.” We don’t dare go after our own faults or we will go after the wrong thing—or, more commonly, a clever substitute for the real thing. Instead, we have to let God first reveal our real faults to us (usually by failing and falling many times!), and then allow God to remove those faults, from God’s side and in God’s way.
It’s important that we ask, seek, and knock to keep ourselves in right relationship with Life Itself. Life is a gift, totally given to us without cost, every day of it, and every part of it. A daily and chosen “attitude of gratitude” will keep our hands open to expect that life, allow that life, and receive that life at ever-deeper levels of satisfaction—but never to think we deserve it.
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Facing the Hurt
Richard Rohr
If you are bringing your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has anything against you, go first and be reconciled to him or her, and then come back and present your gift. —Matthew 5:23–24
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
—Step 8 of the Twelve Steps
Father Richard names the importance of acknowledging wrong and harm, while trusting in the gift of grace:
Despite the higher economy of grace and mercy lived and taught by Jesus, he didn’t entirely throw out the lower economy of merit or “satisfaction.” They build on one another, and the lower by itself is inadequate to life’s truly great tasks—love, forgiveness, endurance of unjust suffering, and death itself. When we move to more mature stages of love and transformation, we don’t jump over earlier stages. We must go back and rectify earlier wrongs. Otherwise, there may be no healing or open future for us—or for those we have hurt.
God fully forgives us, but the impact or “karma” of our mistakes remains, and we must still go back and repair the bonds we’ve broken. Otherwise, others may not be able to forgive us, nor will we likely forgive ourselves. “Amazing grace” is not a way to avoid honest human relationships. Rather, it’s a way to redo them—but now, gracefully—for the liberation of both sides. Nothing just goes away in the spiritual world; all must be reconciled and accounted for. [1]
Anne Lamott recounts how her son held her accountable after she posted insensitive comments online, and reflects on experiencing mercy:
[My son] asked me to apologize publicly. I didn’t want to, because the hundreds of people who attacked me were so vicious…. My son said that this was not the point. The point was that I had done something beneath me that had hurt a lot of people, and that I needed to make things right.
We talked on the phone about this and he said: “I love you, but you were wrong. You did an awful thing. Please apologize. I’m not going to let this go. And I won’t let you go, either.” He was in tears. I was sick to my stomach.
Later he sent an e-mail: “You need to do the right thing, Mom. I love you.”
I wrote to the public that I was deeply, unambiguously sorry, even though I secretly still felt misunderstood…. I did this imperfectly, the best I could, admitting I was wrong. I expressed contrition. It was awful.
My son was grateful, but distant for a time…. Extending mercy had cost him, and extending mercy to myself cost me even more deeply, and it grew us both, my having screwed up on such a big stage. It taught me that mercy is a cloak that will wrap around you and protect you…. It can help you rest and breathe again for the time being, which is all we ever have. [2]
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Sarah Young Jesus Calling
Find freedom through seeking to please Me above all else. You can have only one Master. When you let others’ expectations drive you, you scatter your energy to the winds. Your own desire to look good can also drain your energy. I am your Master, and I do not drive you to be what you are not. Your pretense displeases Me, especially when it is in My “service.” Concentrate on staying close to Me at all times. It is impossible to be inauthentic while you are focusing on My Presence.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Ephesians 5:8-10 (NLT)
8 For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! 9 For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.
10 Carefully determine what pleases the Lord.
Matthew 23:8 (NLT)
8 “Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.
Matthew 6:1 (NLT)
Teaching about Giving to the Needy
6 “Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven.
