Human pleading is a tribute to the infinite goodness that always wraps around us.

We sons and daughters of the human race are rich and we are poor. We have been given existence by a benevolent creator who looks upon us with love. We are poor in the painful limitations imposed on us after the transgressions of our first parents in the Garden of Eden. We can rejoice in the treasures of salvation delivered to us by our Brother Jesus of Nazareth. Yet we also carry the burden of pain and anguish. Loss is part of our passage through time, but we are never alone in our destitution.

Like the psalmist, each of us sings, “I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer. Do not tarry, O my God.” (Ps 40:17) To know our own poverty and neediness should not cast us down. This awareness tells us who we are. It gives us sympathy for others who are also poor. We see material wretchedness, and compassion urges us to offer as much relief as possible. We are told of people whose bodies are invaded by sickness. Victims of violence cry out to us. We do not envy people of wealth and prominence if they display lives empty of true meaning. Poverty comes in multiple forms. Wherever it is, Jesus urges all of us in the human family to offer succor to one another.
Often aid is possible only through prayer.

“Pray for me.” How often in our earthly journey we hear those words addressed to us, and we ourselves say them to someone else.

“Pray for me. Pray for this request of mine.” It is a cry for support, for the assistance of others who will express our needs to God. We are turning to our fellow Christians to intercede for us, to add their voices to our own in beseeching God. We echo St. Paul, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.” (Rom 15:30)  Praying on behalf of needy human beings — and aren’t we all needy? — is one way we try to bring the riches of God into our own small world and into the larger world. Prayers of petition and prayers of intercession have always been a vibrant part of worship in the Christian community. We never rise to a spirituality so exalted that we no longer recognize our poverty. Before God we are ever suppliants and redeemed sinners. This is not a “gimme” kind of praying, a slot machine spirituality as it has sometimes been criticized. Petitionary prayer, the sense of our power as intercessors, is of the very fabric of Christianity. From the beginning, from our origin in Judaism, it has been woven into all our rituals.

When we start to take our spiritual life seriously, prayer in the petitionary mode looms large, especially if some crisis has pushed us to our knees. The first prayers we learned as children were probably entreaties. Frail and small, we had been taught by faith-filled adults to turn to God for something we wanted very much to come to pass.

The prayer of petition is basic to our relationship with a loving Savior from our earliest days until we breathe no more. The experience of our poverty and

{quotes align=right}Loss is a part of our passage through time, but we are never alone in our destitution.{/quotes}

inadequacies is rooted in our human nature. We lift up our hearts to invoke the aid of an overshadowing Providence. Yet why ask, if God knows our needs? The asking articulates for us our own dependence and our certainty that divine help is ever available. Yes, God could solve my problems without my appeal. However, a new sense of our reliance upon God is quickened from knowing Whose generous hands have blessed my poverty with a solution.

But is there really power in prayer that cries out, “Hear my voice, God, when I call. Be merciful and answer me”? (Ps 27:7) Do we change the divine mind, as it were, with our supplication? What does our praying bring about?

Here we tread on mystery. Yet we can understand that our God, who sees beyond the boundaries of time, has foreseen this prayer. The plea has been linked as spiritual power to the favorable answer. That means in the eternal mind of God, our petition has been joined in some way to the outcome asked for. As the sun energizes the earth and brings forth life, so the spiritual energy of our prayer has brought forth what we seek. Every prayer is answered, although we have to admit not always as we have sought. But our entreaty has called forth blessings on the poverty of our human situation even beyond what we have formulated in our beseeching. Prayer has such power.

Our soliciting is not a demand; rather it is filled with confidence. We trust the efficacy of our pleading, knowing it will lighten the burden of any affliction. St. Paul tells us, “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” (Phil 4: 6) Jesus our Brother encourages us, “Ask and it will be given to you…knock and the door will be opened to you.” We are assured that “our Father in Heaven will give good things to those who ask.” (Mt 7:7,11)

Our Father wants us to ask. Human pleading is a tribute to the infinite goodness that always wraps us round. In each petition we make contact with merciful love sustaining us through every instant of time.

In our earthly poverty, we pray through Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit, who knows the longing of our hearts, appeals for us.

“The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness…[and] intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Rom 8:26) Our sighs begin on earth, then rise to heaven where the Spirit of love breathes them forth for our sake. Every prayer is answered. The full mystery of that answer will be disclosed when time is no more. Until then, our hope rests secure in the guarantee Jesus gives, “Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (Jn 16:24)