Prayer and humility

THAT gospel episode where Christ talked about the difference between the prayer of the Pharisee and the publican (cfr. Lk 18,9-14) clearly shows us that for our prayer to be effective, we have to be humble, acknowledging our sinfulness, our defects and weaknesses. We should be wary of our tendency to approach God feeling proud of whatever good we have done.

With God, we have no reason at all to show off whatever good we have done, for everything good comes from him. He knows them already, and for sure is happy with that fact. What we have to do instead is to feel the great need we have of him since we cannot deny that despite all the good things we have done, we continue to have defects and weaknesses, if not all kinds of sin themselves.

Let’s remember what St. James in his Letter said in this regard: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” (4,6) With the current tendency in our culture to fall into virtue signaling, we really need to do some extra effort to remain humble and simple, always feeling the need for God, for forgiveness and for more grace.

One source defines virtue signaling as “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.”

Another source puts it as “a pejorative neologism for the conspicuous and disingenuous expression of moral values with the intent to enhance one’s own image.” Still another source describes it as taking “a conspicuous but essentially useless action ostensibly to support a good cause but actually to show off how much more moral one is than everybody else.”

This is not to develop in us a gloomy and negative self-esteem. Rather the contrary. It is to be realistic about ourselves that would enable us to know more objectively both the good and bad aspects of our life. If we have a realistic and healthy self-esteem, we would know how to approach God properly in prayer, since we would be both thankful to him for the good things we have, and begging for mercy for the bad things.

The acknowledgement of the negative things in our life before God does not undercut the value of the good things we have done. Such acknowledgement would in fact reinforce the merits of those good things. Thus, it is always worthwhile to remain humble in our prayer in the way the publican prayed.

Let’s just be always guarded against our tendency to crow about our achievements. Given the present environment and culture, such tendency is being promoted and encouraged. That is why it is always recommendable that whatever good we do, we do it while passing unnoticed. We should avoid fishing for praises. We should always hide and disappear so that only God shines and is glorified in whatever good we do.

In this regard, we to be most careful in handling our intentions. They play a strategic role in our life, for how and where we direct them would determine whether we want to be with God or simply with our own selves.

Our intentions express who and where in the end we want to be. Do we choose God, or do we simply choose ourselves, or the world in general? It’s actually a choice between good and evil.

Even if we are not aware, or refuse to be aware, of this choice, which is usually the case, the choice between God and us, between good and evil is always made with every human act we do.