Pray

Help me,
who am alone
and have no help but you,
for I am taking my life in my hand.

Most of us will rarely face the kind of deadly physical peril that Queen Esther faced, but all of us should find resonance in her prayer from today’s first reading (Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25 – not extant in Hebrew).

Although we are members of the Body of Christ and united with the Communion of Saints, when we pray privately (as we must regularly do so) we too very much stand alone before God: naked in the presence of Infinity, on the edge of utter oblivion with our eyes fixed on the utterly Transcendent.

Help me,
who am alone
and have no help but you…

We may not have to contemplate walking into near-certain death, but everyday you and I must walk into deadly spiritual peril: facing the temptations of the flesh that suffocate our life in the Spirit and the temptations of convenience that cripple our walking in the Truth.

And so we must pray…

Help me,
who am alone
and have no help but you,
for I am taking my life in my hand.

And in today’s Gospel (Matthew 7:7-12), our Lord answers,

Ask
and it will be given to you;
seek
and you will find;
knock
and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks,
receives;
and the one who seeks,
finds;
and to the one who knocks,
the door will be opened.

And so this Lent we pray, we ask, we seek, we knock, for we are alone before God and are taking our life in our hands.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, be merciful to me – a sinner.