Help Yourself

'A brother said to Abba Anthony, “Pray for me.” The old man said to him, “I will have no mercy on you, nor will God have any, if you yourself do not make an effort and if you do not pray to God.”'

This is the sixteenth of St. Anthony's famous sayings, and it is one of the few that I wholeheartedly agree with. Certainly, there is no help for those who do not try on their own. It does not matter how many people pray for you or of what status they may be. One will only improve if the effort to do so is willingly put forward. God helps those who help themselves. Often in St. Anthony's time and now those both religious and not ask for a blessing to change something they know to be wrong. But these same people will never actually go out and change what needs to be, instead waiting for some 'miracle' to save them.