The words of St Paul, “We do not know what we should pray for as we ought,” I know, ring a bell with all of us Christians. When we are faced with situations that are beyond our grasp and capacity to control, we find ourselves without knowing what we should pray for as we ought.
I remember my experience of what it means to be found in a situation without knowing what I should pray for as I ought. It happened in June 2017 when my father was lying critically ill, unconscious, and on life support, in a Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit in Sri Lanka. Because I am a priest, I was entitled to sit at his bedside at any time of the day. For two weeks, I sat by his bedside, held his left hand, and read Psalms, which cries for help from God, without knowing how or what to pray at such a critical time.
The wishes of the family for my father and everybody else who loved him to recover were loaded onto my shoulders to pray for.
After a beautiful life of 81 years of his life, deep down, I knew it was his time to return Home. I prayed for my father, family, medical staff, and many others. However, there was this awareness in me that I didn’t know how or what to pray for at that time.
In my ministry as a chaplain to public hospitals (in Auckland, Wellington, and Melbourne), I have prayed for patients as I make my visits. Prayer is at the centre of my life, and I pray daily. But on this occasion, I didn’t know how or what to pray for. It is not that I didn’t pray, but I was aware that I didn’t know what to pray for as I ought.
As the first week passed by with this awareness that I didn’t know what I should pray for as I ought, I had an experience at the hospital.
Each day, I was the first to go to the ward to be with my father, and I had to walk past several other wards of the hospital to reach the ICU. One early morning, as I walked past the Children’s Ward, a young mother ran up to me crying. She asked me to help her twelve-year-old son, whose condition had deteriorated overnight. She prostrated at my feet and held onto my feet, and I couldn’t move. The attention of everyone walking down the corridor fell on the mother and me.
In Sri Lanka and South Asia, identifying a Christian priest in public is easy. The Anglicans, Romans, and Methodists wear a white cassock. Think of the white cassock version of the famous British Television detective story series character Father Brown. That is how Christian clergy are attired in Sri Lanka. Over there, to be identified as a member of the clergy of any religion offers many privileges that are not provided in the secularised West anymore. For example, in Sri Lanka, the clergy of every religion (especially Christian and Buddhist) have reserved seats in all public and private transportation services. Clergy also has all-hour access to hospitals, emergency services, the police, prisons, government departments and politicians.
Now, back to the young mother who had fallen prostrate before me and veiling. I bent towards her, unclenched her hands from my sandals, lifted her, and asked how I could help her. She cried loudly and said, ‘Father, come see my son, and do something to heal him”.
She dragged me into the ward and to the room where her son was lying in bed, extremely ill. Because of me, the Paediatric Registrar hurriedly came to the room as a gesture of respect and courtesy. Once the nurses calmed the women down, the Registrar spoke to me in English and explained that the boy was in an advanced stage of Bacterial Meningitis. He said the prognosis was bad. The boy had shown neurological damage, hearing loss, memory lapses, gait problems, seizures, and kidney failure, and the chances of his survival were slim.
The poor mother didn’t understand a word of what the Registrar told me but only knew that her son was dying. He was her only child, and she was a widow. Her husband had died of an accident two years ago, and now she was faced with the possibility of losing her only child. The woman was crying and inconsolable.
When the Registrar and the nurses had left the room, I explained to the woman that my father, too, was critically ill and that I would like to get to him soon after offering a prayer for the son. And I added that she also must pray without ceasing.
The woman gazed at me with a complete blankness on her face and asked me, " Prayer, WHAT is that, Father?” I said, “I will pray to God asking that He heals your son and that you, too, should pray for him.” The woman replied, “Father, I am a Buddhist, and I do not know how to pray.”
The words of this desperate mother, “I do not know how to pray,” resonated with me so profoundly. I broke all the cultural protocols, grabbed hold of her, and allowed her to rest on my breast. Still sobbing, she said: “Father, I do not know how to pray; please teach me.”
It was not a time that I had even a minute to spare because I knew my father had very little time to live. It wasn’t a time to explain what prayer is or how to pray to this stranger. I sighed deeply and said to her: “Nona (meaning, Lady, in Sinhalese), just sit down by your son’s bed, hold his hand, and say: “Lord, please hear my cry and heal my son”.
The woman was a Buddhist. At times of grave illness and critical situations, Buddhists often host monks to their homes to recite hours of what is known as seth pirith. These are repetitive recitations of Buddha’s words, invoking good and protection. So the woman asked me how she, an ordinary laywoman of no merit, could pray.
Under the pressures I was on for time and movement, I imitated an authoritative tone to my voice. I said: “Nona if you want your son to heal, do as I say”. Then, I left her.
Hurriedly, I arrived at my father’s bed, took hold of his hands, and said to the Lord: “I really don’t know what to ask you or what I had asked the woman you sent my way to do. I truly do not know how or what to pray for just now. My father is very sick and unconscious, and the woman’s twelve-year-old son is also very sick. I just now don’t know how to pray or what to say. Both my father and the child are in your hands. May your will be done.”
Then, I just rested my head on my father’s bed mattress and kept quiet. I wished deep in my heart that I would be made known if there were any specific ways or words I should observe and say my prayers for my father and the sick twelve-year-old.
To be honest, except for thanking God for my father and his life, I had no other words to say. From time to time, when my father intermittently opened his weary eyes, I thanked him for all that he’d done for my family and me and kissed him.
For the sick child I had only met for about thirty minutes, I said: “Lord, I don’t know what your plans are. May you angels be present to him and his mother. Your will be done”.
This is exactly how I felt when I found myself in the situation of my 81-year-old father and the 12-year-old boy.
We all have—and continue to experience—these kinds of situations in our lives and in the lives of others. Not a day passes without us hearing about desperate situations people face in our families, communities, counties, and world. When we hear of such situations, aren’t we lost for words to pray?
While at the hospital with my father, I sometimes wondered, “How come a Doctor of Theology does not know how to pray?”
I think these are the exact thoughts St Paul is conveying when he says, "We do not know what we should pray for as we ought."
When St Paul wrote these words, in our contemporary terms, as a student of the most celebrated Teacher of his time, Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), Paul was a Doctor of Theology. But he admits that we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. In 2 Corinthians 11:21-33 and all his letters, St Paul explains the many situations where he had faced notable challenges in life and his ministry.
I don’t think it would be wrong to guess that St. Paul was challenged as a Christian who wondered how to pray in the situations that he had found himself in. He may also have wondered how he could have coped best in the situations had he known how to pray.
If St Paul had not experienced the challenge of wondering how to pray, he would not have penned these words: “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought.” He expressed something he had experienced firsthand.
But then, he gives us the answer to this predicament in the most beautiful way. He tells us that our lack of knowing what we ought to pray belongs to the “flesh” (Romans 8:1-8). He says that flesh cannot please God. The word Paul uses here for “flesh” (Greek. sarx) does not refer to the flesh and blood that make us physical (Greek soma). By “flesh” Paul means everything opposite to the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).
Let me use an example to help us understand what Paul is saying about the flesh. He is saying that we do not know what we should pray for as we ought because our cries to God are like a toddle’s cry to Mummy for candies to please its sugar craving. To use another example, he says that we cry out for prayer like we call out to the plumber, electrician or even the ambulance in a crisis. He implies that a desperate call or a prayer at such times is, although called for, of course, only a cry for help.
This is what he calls our weakness (v.26). It is this weakness that makes us direct our prayers to God like the proverbial toddler’s cry for candies. I think we humans cannot put into words the real need to cry out for sweets. St Paul is saying that our deepest cries to God should be, using the same example, like a toddler asking its Mummy why I am craving sugar.
Now, there’s a vast difference between a toddler wanting to satisfy its craving for sugar and asking Mummy, “Why am I carving for sugar?” If the toddler asks Mummy, “Why am I craving sugar?” and not “Why have I not given sugar for my craving?” the question s/he is asking is beyond their aptitude. Of course, the poor little kid would be lost for words and not know what s/he should be asking.
The real cry for the candies, I think, is a cry of wanting to know and asking for God’s help in understanding why this craving for candy is. But the thing is, we do not know how to ask why this craving is. This is what Paul calls our weakness (v.26).
St. Paul tells us that when we do not know what we should pray for as we ought because of this weakness, the Spirit of God intervenes. Very beautifully, he says that when we cry out for candies without knowing what we are asking for, the Spirit of God, which really knows what we are asking, intercedes for us. Paul puts it beautifully: the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26, The Modern English Translation of the Bible)
Being aware that the sceptics and unbelievers would dispute this, in his much earlier Letter to the Galatians, Paul says that at our Baptism, we “put on Christ” and become the children of God (Gal. 3:26-27). In Romans, he expands on this and says we who have received the Spirit of adoption, therefore, cry to God saying: “Abba, Father.” He goes on to say the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirits that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God.. (Romans 8:15-17)
It is the Spirit of God who will be with us and intercede for us for the higher purpose of our lives. The Spirit of God will guide us despite our stumbling along the way, and the Spirit of God will always keep us close to God and speak for us when we are lost for words.
So Paul declares, The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (vv.26&27).
Three days after the encounter with the women, I was walking past again the children’s ward to my father, who had detreated further. The woman with the sick child whom I had met three days ago interrupted me again. She was hysterical and announced to me that the son had been healed and was being discharged to go home.
I briefly walked into the ward and asked the child what had happened. He said that he had been healthy since he was administered “three pills” in the early hours of the morning by a beautiful and glowing nurse who was dressed in blue. At the time he received the three pills, the boy said, the ward was dimly lightened, and he saw everybody, including his mother, asleep. He added that he had never seen that nurse ever before in the three weeks he had been in the hospital. The nursing staff in the ward confirmed to me that drugs were not administered to any children in the early hours of the day. They also said that they do not have a nurse in the paediatric ward that matches the description given by the boy.
The boy's mother said that she had no idea about anything I had said three days ago about praying. But, sincerely, she said, “Without knowing what to pray for, I said something to the effect of the words that you had asked me to say three days ago: “Lord, please hear my cry and heal my son. “
I am confident that the woman had prayed without knowing that the Spirit had interceded for her with groanings too deep for words. Who was it that administered the “thee pills” to the boy in the early hours of the morning? Was it one of God’s angels? Was it Mother Mary or some other human agent of God? I wouldn’t dare to speculate. God employed the most suitable agent to attend to the boy in response to the mother's cry to heal her son.
I thanked God for what He’d done to the boy. However, I think I did not express my gratitude to God as much as I would have liked it to. I went straight on to my father.
The day happened when he opened his eyes with groans, wanting to say something. His words were terribly muffled by the ventilator tube in his mouth. Again, I did not have any words to say, but I took courage and told him loudly that he had permission from us all to go home to God and wait for us.
After looking at me, my sister and his youngest brother, my father, died the following day. I stayed with him, holding his hand in prayer as Bishop Philip Huggins (from Melbourne) prayed over the phone, committing his soul to God. As I kissed him for the last time, I knew that the Spirit of God had prayed through me all that time, preparing the family and me for his Homecoming in Heaven. That is not what we in the flesh had wanted and had asked from God in our weakness, but what God had prepared for him in His mercy and purpose for all of us.
As for the mother and the kid God cured of Bacterial meningitis, I lost touch. When I contacted the paediatric ward just before I left for home to Melbourne after farewelling my father Home, I was told that the woman had left a note of gratitude. A nurse read out the note to me over the phone. In it, she’d thanked the Power I had mentioned to her as God for answering a wish she did not know to pray for as she ought. (In the Gospels, we read Jesus praising the faith of men and women not of the Jewish faith and granting their requests (E.g. Matthew 4 & 8; Luke 7 & 17; Matthew 15; John 4).
When we pray, let us be confident knowing that in our weakness, it is the Spirit that intercedes for us and that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Amen
Let us pray:
Everloving God, give us grace and courage to hope and to risk disappointment. Teach us to pray expectantly, and when our prayers seem to fail, bring us to pray again and again, for you are our God, who acts and will act again. Hear this prayer for your love’s sake. Amen.
