Couldn’t Have Done It Without You

You have heard the phrase, “Two heads are better than one.” Perhaps you have heard, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” These are acknowledgments that help is worth asking for. We know, that sometimes, to make it through the project or make it through the day it often goes better to work with someone.

Such wisdom is deeply part of our relation to God as well. We look to God. We ask for help. We refer to God as “Savior” and “Deliverer.” Even in light conversation, we hear the casual idiom, “O Lord, help us all.” But we also utter the prayer in all seriousness when we sense the need for divine help.

Since the late 4th century, after his extensive interviews with the solitary monastics of the desert tradition, John Cassian wrote up reports on their wisdom in what he called The Conferences. In the tenth conference or chapter, he urged a formula for calling on the help of God. In this section on prayer, he prescribed the opening verse of Psalm 70, suggesting that we make it a perpetual prayer for all occasions throughout every day:

Be pleased, O God, to deliver me.

O Lord, make haste to help me!”

And why not? None of us are Wonder Woman or Super Man. Calling out for God is a good thing. John Cassian says it like this,

And so for keeping up the continual recollection of God this pious formula is to be ever set before you. “O God make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me.” For this verse has not unreasonably been picked out from the whole of Scripture for this purpose. It embraces all the feelings which can be implanted in human nature and can be fitly and satisfactorily adapted to every condition and all assaults. Since it contains an invocation of God against every danger, it contains humble and pious confession, it contains the watchfulness of anxiety and continual fear, it contains the thought of one’s own weakness, confidence in the answer, and the assurance of a present and ever ready help.

Cassian passes along Abba Isaac’s wisdom that in praying it, we are saying that we cannot be set free without the aid of our defender. Benedict of Nursia, in the 6th century, put together, what were the most influential monastic rules in Western Christendom. He was heavily influenced by Cassian, so it is not surprising that this formula, “O God, make speed to save us: O Lord make haste to help us.” Came to be the opening for the Evening Office of prayer, and still is for us, in our Book of Common Prayer.

Take a look now at how the Collect of the Day for this Sunday fits perfectly into this humble recognition that we need God perpetually to protect the Church, the vulnerable body of believers. This Collect maintains that only God can lend the goodness that can guard and lead the church:

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

As Christians, we understand that we need God, always and in every way. Whatever we accomplish, we feel it could not have been done without God’s grace. It is always by divine goodness and mercy that we continue.

I like the idea of John Cassian, reporting the desert wisdom of Abba Isaac, to constantly have that simple prayer from the psalms ready. I like the New English Bible version of Psalm 70:1, perhaps because of its rhythm: Show me favor, O God, and save me; hasten to help me, O Lord. I have said it so much in my quiet meditation, in my head while driving, and when I feel particularly in need, that if feels as though it is always sounding out just by the pattern of my breathing and my beating heart. We can’t do without God. I see this practice of simple connection to God as a promising way of praying continually.