Mtr Mary Trainor

What a friend we have in Jesus  …*

Dear friend,

Imagine, if you will, an eight-year-old boy running home to show his report card to his mother: “I got all A’s, Ma!”

Imagine now that mother, taking the report card, while saying to her son, “Self-praise stinks!”

Undoing the damage from that moment took the remainder of my father’s life, and yet his mother—a generation later—was able to be the most affirming grandmother to me.

… all our sins and griefs to bear!

In today’s Office Gospel from Luke (18:9-14), Jesus speaks about the need for humility. He contrasts the better-than-you Pharisee with the chest-beating tax collector. It’s the latter, Jesus says, who will receive the greatest reward.

Cutting Grandma a lot of slack, I can imagine she was trying to give her son a lesson in how to be humble. But what he heard was a reprimand from the most important person in his life, a spirit-crushing admonition.

What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!

The “humble” that Jesus wants from us may not be as straightforward as it seems. It’s not black-and-white, and I can only imagine how challenging it might be for loving parents to teach such lessons well.

I am certainly capable—maybe you are, too—of making comments I regret the minute they leave my mouth. Maybe that’s just part of being human.

O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear  …

So I wonder, where is the hope for us, for me, assuming self-elevating remarks will continue to leave my lips? Or worse, words that cut another to the core?

The hope, I believe, is to take it to the Lord in prayer, as the old hymn says, and seek the Spirit’s inspiration to also offer words of praise, encouragement, hope to another, more often than I seek notice for myself.

All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Mtr Mary

What a Friend we have in Jesus, Number 109, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” an authorized companion of “The Hymnal 1982.” Words: Joseph Scriven. Music: Charles C. Converse.