psalm 119: it's ok to ask for help - 32nd week Thursday 2017

Today Psalm 119 is read to us. It is a very long psalm.  It is a song of praise to God’s words, his statutes, his ordinances, his laws and decrees, and also it is a song of praise to the promises God gave to those who live by his words.  In the same psalm, part of which has been read to us this morning are petitions, pleadings before God – “Let your countenance shine upon your servant, teach me your statutes.  Let my soul live to praise you, may your ordinances help me.”  These are not ordinary petitions we usually pray for like good weather, health, or solutions to this and that problem.  The petition is more fundamental, more basic to our reality as human persons.  It is an acknowledgement that left on our own we are powerless, that without God’s help we cannot defeat sin, that we cannot by our own strength alone believe in God or maintain a relationship with him.  We need to be guided, we need to be saved, we need to be blessed and we need to be taught.  And who can do this for us?  God.

I have been a formator of seminarians for the past 18 years and you will ask who in my experience was the seminarian I had the most difficulty.  Is it the intellectually challenged seminarian?  No. The rebellious seminarians?  No.  The seminarian who keeps you awake in the night because you don’t know the mischief he is concocting in his fertile imagination?  No.  The dungol?  No.

The most difficult persons in formation are those who feel they know everything they don’t want to be guided; they are those who think they can handle themselves well and are therefore in no need of help; they are those who feel they are in control, they can manage, they can survive on their own.  These are difficult.

Psalm 119 reminds us that the consciousness and the acknowledgement of one’s vulnerabilities and needs, the openness to be taught, the willingness to be guided, are basic not just in formation but also in forming a correct attitude and relationship to God.  It's ok to acknowledge helplessness.  Its ok to ask for help.