If You Want Something Done Right, Ask for God's Help

Third Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.  I can’t tell you how many times I have operated under that saying.  In the long run it may help to explain things to others and have them assist you with your task, but in a crunch, it’s so much easier to do what you know needs to be done, and to make sure it’s done in a correct way.
    While this approach can be helpful in daily tasks at home or at work, it is poison to our faith.  St. Paul tells us, “do not be wise in your own estimation.”  The apostle talks not only about head knowledge, but also about thinking that we can take care of ourselves when it comes to our needs.  When something goes wrong, we figure out a way to fix it.  When we need something done, we do it.  We maybe even think that the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves” is a phrase from the Scriptures or at least uttered by a saint, when, in fact, it likely originated in pagan Greece. 

    Our Gospel tells us the approach that we should take, and does so twice over.  We heard about the leper and about the centurion.  Both demonstrated how to live the spiritual life: go to Jesus.  The leper certainly wanted health.  He wanted to be reunited with the rest of the community of Israel, and to be able to worship God in the temple.  But he couldn’t give himself what he wanted most.  He couldn’t do it himself.  So he went to our Lord and said, “‘Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.’”  He relied on the Lord and on the Lord’s good will, and did not presume that the Lord would even grant his request.  But he had faith that Christ could heal him, and heal him Christ did.
    The centurion wanted health for his slave.  He wanted the paralysis to end.  But he did not consider himself worthy to have our Lord even come to his house to do the miracle.  He simply had faith that Christ could heal, even from afar.  Maybe the centurion had tried doctors to cure the paralysis.  Maybe he had tried to take of the matter himself.  But to no avail. 
    It is also important to note that slaves were property.  Yet the centurion did not treat his slave as property.  If you have a horse that is lame, you euthanize it and put it out of its misery, because it is no longer good for anything, just using up supplies.  If a tree is no longer producing fruit, you cut it down so that something else can be planted that will produce food.  Countless Romans had likely dispatched their slaves because they were no longer able to help with the work that the estate required.  Yet the centurion had not killed his slave, but asked for healing.  And he trusted that the Lord could heal.
    When we trust only ourselves to advance spiritually, we are doomed to failure.  When we figure that we have gotten ourselves into a mess, and so we have to get ourselves out, we will not succeed.  Only with God’s help can we find the healing that we need.  Only with God’s help will we find progress in the spiritual life.  Only with God’s help can we find freedom from the messes in which we so often find ourselves.
    It is so easy to become Pelagians.  Pelagius was a British layman who taught that we have to reach out to God first, to do some good first, which God will then approve.  Pelagius denied original sin, and said that we could be holy without the assistance of grace.  This was declared heretical by the local Council of Carthage in 411, and was vehemently opposed by St. Augustine of Hippo.

      If anyone could understand that merely willing the good was not enough, St. Augustine certainly did.  He had tried almost every philosophy, every seductive way of living, including fathering a child out of wedlock.  Even after his mind began to believe in the truth of Catholicism, his will could not seem to follow.  Then, one day, at his wits end from the frustration of not being able to do what he wanted, he heard a voice call out, “Tolle, lege,” "Take, read," opened up St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, and was “knocked over” by God’s grace, which allowed him to live as he desired, according to the law of Christ and His Church. 
    But how often do we think that we are somehow more privileged than St. Augustine, that we can do it by ourselves?  We have a virtue in our life, and so we decide to achieve it, not asking for God’s help, or only doing so as a second thought.  God has to be the beginning, the middle, and the end of achieving any virtue.  We cannot start a virtue on our own, continue a virtue on our own, or achieve a virtue on our own.  The only thing we can do on our own is sin.  The rest is made possible by God’s grace.
    Or, perhaps there is a sin that we are fighting.  Perhaps we have been fighting it for some time, and we do not find any progress.  I try to give some helpful advice in the confessional, especially if I am not pressed for time, for ways that we can respond to God’s grace and cooperate with it.  But so often we forget that those practical pointers are meant to accompany prayer and asking for divine help, rather than pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. 
    Do we need to cooperate with God’s grace?  Certainly.  Can we be passive in our own conversion?  Certainly not.  But how often do we try to be wise in our own estimation and create plans which are not based in the will of God, and then find ourselves shocked that it didn’t work on our own?
    When it comes to the spiritual life, a better adage would be: if you want something done right, let God start the work.  Or: God helps those who ask for it.  Or, to quote the Psalms, “Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do its builders labor.”  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.