If a man’s deeds are not in harmony with his prayer, he prays in vain. … We should no longer do those things against which we pray. – from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers
This word from Abba Moses seems simple enough. Don’t keep doing the wrong that you want to overcome. Despite the simplicity, we make it difficult to follow in a couple of ways.
First, there is the tendency not to assume any responsibility for us. Adam is an example of this when he blamed God and Eve for his disobedience.* The Creator of good things gave him freedom of choice and ability to do right even when one closest to him did wrong. Adam sought to hide rather than admit, confess, and repent. If not confronted, who knows how many layers of leaves he would bury himself with or how far and long he would have run away from God (if such a thing were possible). Many of us are so deliberately hidden from spiritual reality that our prayers are reduced to meaningless babble.
There is also a tendency to look past our sins without even being aware of our own.** We may not have committed a civil crime. But an unrepented sin grows deep into the soul to the point where it’s greater than those who seem worse. Indeed those who we accuse may even repent of their ways more readily and fully with prayer. But how can we help anyone overcome a minor scratch when we are blind to the gouge inside of us? Prayer done with deflections on others are babblings that do nothing for the healing we need.
Harmonizing our prayers with our actions begins with admission of our sins and not using other people’s sins as an excuse for them. I have to admit my sin, confess, and repent. I have to bare my own failings and not the real or imagined faults of anyone else. Fr. Jerome Sanderson used to challenge us in his St. Moses lectures that every Sunday we declare ourselves to be the worst of sinners, “But, do we really believe that?” Let’s believe so that we can act according to what we ask for.
*Genesis 3:1-11, **Matthew 7:1-5
Desert Fathers Dispatch 