Thought for the Day – 26 July – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)
HUMILITY
Meditations for a Month
Humility in Prayer
We are all anxious that God should hear and grant our prayers. He is always ready to do so. The obstacles are always on our side and one of the chief of these is a want of humility.
If God resists the proud, He is not likely to hear their prayers; hence, one of the first prerequisites of ssuccess in my prayers, is that I should humble myself before God. Then and not until then, will my prayer reach the ears of the Most High.
“The prayer of him, who humbleth himself, pierces the clouds.”
One of the most dangerous forms of pride is a contempt for others and one which we maybe very prone to manifest, without realisng its ruinous effects upon our prayers.
When the self-complacent Pharisee thanked God that he was not like the poor publican, he probably was quite unconscious of the offensiveness of his prayer to God. Pride blinded him.
So it often blinds us and we little think that when in prayer, we secretly congratulate ourselves on being free from certain faults which we see in our neighbours and, all the while, we are displeasing God by thus harshly judging others! How would He hear our prayers unmder these conditions!
How are we to be humble in prayer?
We should be humble in prayer by dwelling upon our own miseries and the good points we see in those around us or which we should see, if our own pride did not make us blind to others’ superiority to us and, the fact that, the graces God has liberally bestowed upon us, make our ingratitude and our want of correspondence to them, all the more culpable!
AnaStpaul 