Multiple times a day, I repeat these words: “O Lord, make haste to help me.” They are the well-known response to the versicle, “God, come to my assistance,” which begins all but one of the “hours” that make up the Liturgy of the Hours. I have made this response literally thousands of times, and then, as sometimes happens, it occurred to me one day to wonder, “why?” It would be easy to think that when we are at prayer, we are safe, and if we ask for help we would be asking for help for later, for when the trials and temptations which beset us “out there,” in the world to which we will return after we finish praying. Yet for over a thousand years, at least as early as St. Benedict, and perhaps earlier, the Church has placed these words on our lips at the beginning of her “official” prayers throughout the day. Why?
One straightforward answer given by the Catholic Encyclopedia is that this prayer is a supplication that we may be protected from distractions during prayer. Anyone who has ever tried to pray knows that this is indeed something we need help with, and it is comforting to know that while we may live in a particularly distracted age, this is a struggle which has been well known since the early days of Christianity.
But behind this eminently practical reason there is a deep theological truth: we are unable to render God fitting worship on our own. Christian worship is a divine act, requiring divine power. Worship is God’s work. In speaking of the sacramental character, or indelible mark on the soul, bestowed in the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and holy orders, St. Thomas Aquinas explains that “by them we are deputed to the worship of God … [which] consists either in receiving divine things or in bestowing them on others. And for both these purposes some power is needed.” Thus we have received the power for divine worship from God in our baptism. This is preeminently true of the liturgy, but it’s true even of our personal prayer, which is always a participation in Christ’s priesthood. Simon Tugwell, O.P. says at the beginning of Prayer in Practice, “as a priestly people we are authorised to perform acts of prayer, … but the intimacy and freedom of prayer … we must be content to receive as and when it comes” (5).
Are we then to go about our lives and assume that sometime or other prayer will come automatically? Prayer may arise spontaneously, but as participants in Christ’s priesthood we do not need to wait for it. Rather, in addition to spontaneous prayers we ought to have regular prayer times which we begin by praying that God will give us the gift of prayer in this concrete time and place. And thus in remembering that our prayer remains always a gift from him we can be freed from worrying about how our prayer feels, realizing that even when our prayer seems dry, the very fact that we are praying is the result of God’s gift in having moved us to do so. It is he who both inspires our prayer, and will guide our prayer in the way that he knows best and sees fit.
Thus, the Church invites us to start our prayers by asking God to help us pray, both that we may ask for the very practical help of staying focused, but also to remind us that while we can grow in the habit of prayer, at the end of the day we should not be anxious about our prayer—it is God’s project, made possible by his power. Only he can unite us to himself.
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