Let my cry come to you
Today, we sing with the psalmist: O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you!
It is easy, when life is going well, to give credit to ourselves for all of our comforts, all of our successes and all of our works. After all, we worked very hard to get where we are! Yet, somehow, the more we have, the more we want; the more we take personal pride in our worldly achievements and our possessions, the less satisfying they become. There is always more to be had. It’s almost as if our true desire isn’t of this world at all.
O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you!
It is when we are brought low — by illness, job loss, hunger, disappointment, sadness — that we are reminded how fleeting worldly things are, and how little control we ever truly have over them. And when we cry out in prayer, God hears us. He listens.
O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you!
We are called to love God above all things, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. When the neighbor cries out in poverty, isolation or despair, then we, like God, must not “despise their prayer.” All the gifts and talents with which God has graced us are especially for this moment. Our gifts are meant to be shared, and through this sharing we not only bring the comfort, the food or the money that may be needed, we bring the love of God and the light of hope.
O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you!
Both poverty and wealth can separate us from God. Wealth tempts us with worldly comforts, and poverty viscerally reminds us of our material needs. Either way, the more we are tied to this world, the more we become “of this world,” which, as Jesus tells the Pharisees in today’s gospel, prevents us from following Him. What a great gift it is, then, that we may share our poverty and our wealth with one another, loosening each other’s ties to this world through works of charity, acts of love. Our prayers may be heard and answered by each other, acting as God’s instruments, drawing us closer to each other and to the Father whose love may be our eternal reward.
His truth is written on our hearts, and so we sing with the psalmist:
O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you!
Timothy P. Williams is Senior Director, Formation and Leadership Development for the National Council of the United States Society of St. Vincent de Paul.