By IHE Graduate Fellow Meghan Duke
In his question on prayer in the Summa Theologiae,[1] Saint Thomas says that the first thing that is necessary for prayer is that we approach God and that the second is that we make a petition. We can do this, he says, in three ways: First, through an act of intercession, which is a determinate request. For example, Bartimaeus’s request, “Master, I want to see.”[2] Second, we can do this through an act of supplication, which is an indeterminate request. For example, “Lord, help me!” Third, Thomas says, we can petition by a simple statement of fact by which we insinuate what we are asking for. For example, Mary’s comment: “They have no wine.”[3]
I’d like to propose a fourth mode of petition, or maybe a 3(b): petition by way of grumbling.
The Israelites, for example, petition by way of grumbling during their wandering hungry in the wilderness. They “murmured against Moses and Aaron,” complaining, “‘Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’” The Lord immediately responds by sending them manna (Ex. 16:2-4)
On its own merits, this grumbling is no prayer at all. It doesn’t even meet the first condition of prayer: The Israelites have not approached God at all; they make their complaint to Moses and Aaron. But commenting on this passage, Saint Cyril of Alexandria suggests that even this kind of grumbling can be elevated to prayer by virtue of the one who hears it:
A petition through prayer would be fitting for those who are perfect in disposition, but grumbling, however it happens, on the part of those who are weaker from weariness will in some way participate in this, and the Savior, who loves everyone, is not altogether angry at this. Just as for those who are still babies, crying sometimes suffices as a request for their needs, and by it the mother is often summoned to find out what will please the infant, so also for those who are still babies and have not yet progressed to understanding, their crying, so to speak, from weariness has the force of a petition to God.[4]
It’s a consolation to know that even our mundane grumblings can be received by God’s paternal solicitude as prayer. But there is, I think, a more perfect kind of grumbling that is possible when we approach God with our complaints.
This is, for example, what Saint Martha does when the Lord visits her house, and her sister Mary leaves her to do all the serving. She asks in exasperation: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”[5] It’s the kind of complaint parents hear daily from bickering children and one can imagine a mother snapping back: “Don’t be a tattletale!” or “Settle it among yourselves!”
Contemplating the passage, Saint Teresa of Avila understands Martha’s grumbling very differently. Martha was not complaining about the work, she argues. For she loved Jesus very much, and “love turns work to rest.” Rather,
Her greatest sorrow was the thought that You, Lord, did not feel sad about the trial she was undergoing and didn’t care whether she was with You or not. Perhaps she thought you didn’t have as much love for her as for her sister. This must have caused her greater sorrow than did serving the one for whom she had such great love. Love made her dare to ask why you weren’t concerned.[6]
Indeed, it is Martha’s love for the Lord that “made her dare to ask” him why he wasn’t concerned about her. Rather than holding back her worries and grievances, Martha humbly lays them before the Lord so that he can resolve them for her with his gentle reply. This kind of grumbling is, in fact, an admirable frankness that is essential for real intimacy in any friendship, including friendship with God.
[1] Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 83, a.17.
[2] Mark 10:51.
[3] John 2:3.
[4] Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 6:32-6:33.
[5] Luke 10:40-42.
[6] Teresa of Avila, Soliloquy 5 in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. 1, 447-448.
