"This poor man called; the Lord heard him. In the Lord my soul shall make its boast. The humble shall hear and be glad.” The Readings at this Sunday’s celebration, like the responsorial psalm cited above, question the dispositions that we bring to prayer.
Why is it that the scriptures insist that the prayers of the poor and humble are heard by God while the prayers of the proud and rich go unanswered? Poverty and humility, pride and riches, are not intended as descriptions of economic circumstances. They describe the attitudes of heart and mind that are the necessary preconditions for the prayer that unites us with God. It is for this reason that the Book of Ecclesiasticus describes the Lord as a judge who is no respecter of persons. In other words, pride of status and achievement can never bring us into the presence of God. Sinful pride, whatever form it takes, is a reliance upon what we can achieve of ourselves. It renders God redundant and effectively excludes him from our prayer. The supplication of the widow and the orphan, on the other hand, knows its need of God. As such it is a prayer that turns to God from a trust in his graciousness rather than a clinging to misplaced self-sufficiency.
