A brother said to Father Anthony, “Pray for me,” The elder said to him, “I will have no mercy upon you, nor will God have any, if you yourself do not make an effort and if you do not pray to God.”
38 Sayings of Saint Anthony the Great
Saint Anthony the Great gave both encouragement and rebuke. This is one of his rebuke sayings. It concerns a man who asked for intercessory prayer from the great saint. You might ask why he would not immediately accede to the request? Is it not appropriate to ask the saints for intercession?
But, Saint Anthony discerned something about the brother. We do not know the full background since all that has come down to us is the saying. But, what appears to be true is that this brother was not willing to put in the work of prayer on his own account. Rather, he was looking for someone to do the work for him, so he went to the holy monk. His rebuke was given because of his failure to prayer for himself.
This brings up an important point. We are called to the work of prayer. When we ask for intercession from either our pastor, our friends, our relatives, or the saints, we should be asking for that help because we have already been praying and have realized that we need a concert of prayer rather than a single prayer.
As an aside, not all subjects need a concert of prayer. Some subject seem to naturally be subjects that we can handle ourselves before the Lord. To give a silly example, I do not need to ask for intercessory prayer in order to bless the food at my family’s table. I do not need to ask for intercessory prayer when I am praying a simple blessing over one of our daughters. There are many areas that often only need contact between me and God.
But, there are many areas in which a concert of prayer is most helpful. When one has lost a job. When one has lost a relative. When one has a difficult decision to make. When something so massively good has happened that several of you get together to thank God. In other words, there are subjects that naturally lend themselves to a concert of prayer.
But, when we have a subject that lends itself to a concert of prayer, it is expected that we have prayed before we begin asking for intercession. We are expected to be involved in the hard work of prayer rather than simply looking for someone to whom to pass off that work. There are some exceptions to this principle. There have been times when people have gathered spontaneously to pray because of a massive event, for instance. In those cases, there may be no person asking for intercession, but rather the entire group unexpectedly coming together in response to God’s call for prayer NOW.
But, the common principle that Saint Anthony was teaching is that before you ask for intercessory prayer, you must first have commenced the work of prayer yourself. Only after that should you ask for intercessory prayer.
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