Keeping the Promise

“Keeping the Promise”
Lent 2009 – Day 32 (Apr 02)

Deshi Ramadhani, SJ

Priests are human too. Strangely, for some, it’s hard to accept. If you know me well and live in the same house, you will immediately know what I mean. Yes, we priests, make mistakes, ranging from simply oversleeping and thus coming late to say Mass, to agreeing to preside a wedding for two different couples in two different churches at the same time! Yet, people keep coming to us priests and ask for our prayers.

A senior priest jokingly said to a group of lay audience, “When your priest says, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ don’t believe him. He won’t do it. There are too many people asking him for prayers, and he can hardly remember each of them.” I can relate to this. Sometimes I can only say in my prayer, “God, I don’t remember who exactly has asked for my prayers and what petitions they have. But I want to keep my promise, and so I offer all of them to You.”

Breaking a promise is a lot easier than making it! This is certainly true with us humans, but not with God. The beauty is this: God knows that we will break our promise to Him, and that’s why God always keeps His promise to us! Yes, I said, “that’s why.” Our inability to keep our promise is the reason for God to keep His promise. After all, in terms of keeping promise before God, we are helpless! What a wonderful God we have.