“Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
-Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent
I have the power in myself to do many things. I have no problem going to the gym, learning new languages, and living within my means, so how can it be that I “have no power in myself to help myself?”1
My aversion to any notion of helplessness started early. My high school psychology teacher taught that under certain conditions humans do not have free will. In situations of extreme hunger or low temperatures, he said, we cannot control what we will do in order to survive. I remember protesting, “No matter what, we always have a choice.” My indomitable optimism and can-do spirit hadn’t yet met any real suffering.
In today’s collect we acknowledge the precariousness of the human situation: “Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.” It’s a holistic prayer. It concerns body and soul. Its premise is that physically and spiritually we are more fragile than we think.
The prayer is not saying that we have no agency, nor is it advocating an unhealthy view of Total Depravity–that humans are wholly evil. Its sixth century composers believed that we were created good, but they also knew, possibly more so than we do today, that there is a whole lot of which we aren’t in control.
In recent years, I’ve found discussions of human frailty and limitation much more congenial and even freeing. The admission that there is “no power in ourselves to help ourselves” sounds a whole lot like what many of my healthy friends at Alcoholics Anonymous recite every week: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.”2 Like them, I’d found that I have tendencies, addictions, and character traits that, try as I may, I just can’t quit.
This acknowledgment that I am not as free as I thought I was has broken the yoke of having to “pull myself up by my own bootstraps.” It’s freed me to seek external help from friends and support groups, and, most importantly, from the one who, in the words of the collect, has promised to “keep us” and “defend us.”
When it comes to sins we can’t shake, our prayer is not that God would complete our human efforts. We’re not saying, “I can make it 85% of the way, Lord, but you’ve gotta take care of the remaining 15%.” We’re taking a cue from the Serenity Prayer, and acknowledging that these are “the things I cannot change,” while trusting the “Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”3
In the end, this prayer is an invitation to freedom. It’s a call to acceptance and surrender and to no longer “chase after the wind.”4 We may “have no power in ourselves to help ourselves” when it comes to that which we simply can’t quit, but we serve the God “who raises the dead, and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”5 He has the power to help us. He can make a way out of no way.
The first two of these examples are a lie for the sake of the article.
Step One of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
Step Two.
Ecclesiastes 2:17.
Romans 4:17.