Fr Matthew Reese

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
—Romans 8:26-27

Dear Friends in Christ,

Shortly before I was ordained, I went out to a monastery and spent a whole day meditating on a little book called The Christian Priest Today by Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey. First published in 1972, the book began as a series of lectures given to ordinands the week before their ordinations. (My college chaplain remembered hearing Ramsey himself reading them from the pulpit!)

And there is a lovely little passage on prayer and the difficulties we all find in making the space to talk with God:

“You put yourself with God, empty perhaps, but hungry and thirsty for him; and if in sincerity you cannot say that you want God you can perhaps tell him that you want to want him; and if you cannot say even that perhaps you can say that you want to want to want him! Thus you can be very near him in your naked sincerity; and He will do the rest, drawing out from you longings deeper than you knew were there and pouring into you a trust and a love like that of the psalmist—whose words may soon come to your lips.”

The Archbishop’s advice is, of course, not just to would-be priests. It is sound advice for any Christian. And it is not even his advice—it’s really that of Saint Paul to the Romans that we will hear this morning.

Saint Paul is exhorting us to unburden ourselves. To unburden ourselves of the fear that we will come to God with the wrong words, or the wrong asks, or in the wrong way. He is reminding us both that “with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37), and that the good that we do, we do by God’s grace.

Our prayer will not always be easy, Ramsey reminds us:

“There will be many ups and downs, times when [we] pray badly and times when [we] pray well, times when prayer is a slogging disciple and times when it is a spontaneous joy. [But] the supreme fact is the prayer of Jesus himself […] he will be there, praying and wanting you to have a little share with him in his prayer.”

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew