Host: What is supplication?

Rev. Joseph McCloskey: Supplication is the only thing that nobody has to be taught. It is an attitude of prayer that we would be needy with God. If I am going to be honest about my relationship to people, I am always waiting to be needed. The greatest gift that anybody can give to another is to need them and that I would need this God of mine with my whole being, my whole life and my whole soul that I am made for heaven, that we have destiny of heaven that God wants us to be with him that's what's needy is all about.

If I am going to be willing to ask another for something, I am giving them power over me. The perfect love always generates the need of making reply and one of the things that I have to say again and again to the people that I am Spiritual Director for is, nobody can deserve love. We all need love. If God hadn't first loved us, we wouldn't know how to love. But how needy, how much do I need God's love and God's love is what life is all about. So how do I express my needs? Supplication. How deep is that need? It is the very breath of life that I need. How responsive is this God to this very breath of life that I need? He is constantly creating and recreating us. We wouldn't be alive if he wasn't actively involved in loving us. So how grateful can I be for being alive? I am as grateful as the ways in which I give my life away for the sake of people. How much do I adore God? Adoration. If I find my God in every brother and sister who comes my way, then I know how much I love. One of my great heroes of life is Mahatma Gandhi who said, "If I am praying for the person who kills me, I will know I died a peaceful person.

" Martin Luther King said it even more powerfully that as far as I am concerned when he said, "The greatest of all the sufferings, the best of all the sufferings is undeserved suffering because that makes me more like Christ and if I need with all my being, my soul is crying out for you my God. If there is nothing about life that I don't need in Christ then supplication is the richness of my attitude towards God that I would be forever crying out to heaven for his love.

" But it's a two way street because he needs to be needed. I need him in order that I can know myself as who I have loved and our gratitude is really the appreciation of how our so great need was fulfilled in his son, Jesus Christ. 1