PRAYER OF EMPTY HANDS

St. Leopold Mandic of Padua, a great confessor of our time who spent many hours in the confessional, prayed with the gesture of showing empty hands. When hearing confessions, he held his hands in his lap as if, in this way, wanting to tell Jesus, You see Lord, I am not capable of helping the one who is kneeling before me. I am able to give him nothing. Fill these hands with your grace. If he had tried to continually repeat this to Jesus, he would have been exhausted; besides, while listening to confessions, it would not have been possible. You can also pray with this attitude of being poor in spirit in various situations. You can hold your hands in the same way, being aware that it is always a gesture of petition for Jesus to fill your empty hands with His graces and to make you an instrument of His works.

A truly expressive testimony of St. Leopold Mandic’s faith was his gesture of showing empty hands. Those empty hands turned toward God symbolized his expropriation of any gifts—an expression of extraordinary faith. This faith enabled God to perform miracles through him in the confessional. Our gesture of showing empty hands can be directed toward God not only in spiritual matters, as in the case of St. Leopold Mandic, but it can also indicate our attitude of awaiting everything from God. It should accompany us in everything we do in life: in work, in raising our children, in our influence on others, and in prayer. The gesture of empty hands should also accompany us when looking for the greatest of God’s gifts to come—the gift of Himself for He is Love that embraces us and in which we are immersed.

Father Tadeusz Dajczer
The Gift of Faith, Fourth Edition, 233, 40

PRAYER OF THE TAX COLLECTOR

“He then addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. ‘Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted’” (Lk 18:9-14).

Why does God so easily justify the tax collector, a personification of sinfulness? Why does the ‘just’ Pharisee leave not only unjustified but with the promise of coming humiliations? In His parable about the Pharisee and tax collector, Jesus explains this to us. Even the gravest sins do not close a man’s heart to God as much as living a lie, that is:

Failing to recognize one’s nothingness, glorifying oneself with the gifts God has given, and considering oneself as superior to others on this account.

While the one who is justified is the person who confesses to God his sins, and, believing in God’s mercy, prays: “Oh God, be merciful to me a sinner!”

S.C. Biela
In the Arms of Mary, Third Edition, 4-5