Today we’re celebrating the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time; and our readings for the Mass invite us to reflect deeply upon the power and nature of prayer. From Abraham's bold intercession on behalf of Sodom, to Jesus teaching His disciples how to pray, we are called to a renewed understanding of our relationship with God.
But first we should probably talk about what is prayer …
If we look up “prayer” in the English dictionary, we see prayer defined as: a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God. It come to us from a French word that is based on the Latin precarius, which means ‘obtained by entreaty.’
For many of us, this is what first comes to mind when we pray … we are asking for something from God; after all, it was easy for the Israelites to cling to God in the desert, but it was even easier to forget God when times got better and they prospered in the Promised Land., … however, if this is all prayer is, why pray at all?
- If God is beneficent and all that He does is good…
…then why would you ask Him to change anything?
- If God is omnipotent and can do things however He desires…
…why are things not the way He desires?
- If God is omniscient, knows what we need and wants to do nice things for us…
…why does He wait for us to ask Him?
If we truly believe in an Omniscient, Omnipotent and Beneficent God, then He doesn't need our prayers. Maybe the whole point of prayer is to elevate us.
The Church teaches that prayer is “the raising of one’s mind and heart to God, or the petition of good things from him in accord with his will.” It is the “the personal and living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is infinitely good, with his Son Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Spirit who dwells in their hearts.” This is not a new idea … in Hebrew, the word for prayer (Tefillah) is comes from a root word (tofel) that means to reconnect or to bond.
God wants to change us from the inside out. And that means He changes our prayer from the ordinary to the extraordinary by changing us as we pray.
ILLUSTRATION: The Prayer of Abraham
With a little unpacking, today’s first reading offers an excellent illustration of praying with faith.
- The city of Sodom is a den of sin and iniquity, and the Lord tells Abraham that he’s going to destroy it.
- But something curious happens. Abraham says, “Wait a second, suppose there were 50 innocent people. Would you still destroy the city?” God says that he would not.
- Then Abraham keeps bargaining God down. “What if there were only 40?” God says that for 40 innocent people he would spare the city. This continues until God says that for the sake of 10 righteous people he would not destroy the city.
- As a brief aside, From this, we have a possible origin of the requirement for 10 adults, known as a minyan, for many Jewish religious obligations and communal prayers.
Of course the cynical point of this story is that nothing changed. There were not even ten righteous people in Sodom and God still destroyed it, so what was the point? … Unless … Unless, the story was not about Sodom, but about Abraham … maybe … we should look at what changed for him?
This passage reveals several crucial aspects of prayer.
- First, it shows Abraham's deep concern for others, even those who are wicked. His prayer is not self-serving but driven by compassion.
- Second, it demonstrates the power of intercessory prayer. Abraham dares to speak to God, to plead on behalf of others, trusting in God's justice and mercy.
- Third, it highlights God's willingness to listen and respond to the prayers of His faithful servants.
ILLUSTRATION: The Lord’s Prayer
In today’s Gospel reading, one of Jesus’ disciples asks Him to “teach us to pray.”
On its face, this seems like a straightforward-enough request, but when one understands the context in which it would have been asked, it would be similar to Michael Jordan’s asking someone to teach him how to dribble a basketball.
The Jewish disciples of Jesus should have already been experts on prayer. The whole of what we call today the Old Testament was one long instruction on how to pray: Abraham, Moses, Samson, David, Elijah, Esther … all teach by example. The 150 psalms were a prayer book the Jews sang over and over, the prophetic books contain many examples of prayer, and the wisdom literature shares the fruit of prayer and contemplation on the mysteries of God. The history of the Jews and the whole Hebrew Bible was a school of prayer. Yet Jesus’ disciples, fully educated in that school, knew that there was something different about Jesus’ prayer that they hadn’t learned from the rabbis in the synagogues or the levitical priests in the Temple. What were they doing wrong? What were they still missing?
- First … Jesus revealed that prayer was to be like that of a beloved son or daughter, to a Father who loves his child with great affection. In the Old Testament mentality, God was regarded as so awesome, transcendent and distant that the great intimacy and loving reciprocity that God desires to have with us was not always apparent. Jesus came to reveal the Father’s face and to help us to turn to him as a beloved child.
- Second … is to trust in the Father’s love … and to surrender ourselves to His will (Thy Kingdom come … Thy will be done). I can think of no greater example of this than when the prayer Jesus prayed the night before His passion … “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42).
- Third … make it a living relationship with God. Prayer is the raising of our mind and heart to Him, a mutual self-giving between God and us. It is through prayer that we come to know God, to hear His voice, and to be transformed by His grace. It is a gift that demands our commitment and continuity.
Not long ago … I heard a story that I think illustrates all of this. It was about a boy who wanted to learn how to pray, but did not know how. He told his priest that he wanted to learn and his priest said, “Let’s start with you telling me the prayers that you know. The little boy said, ‘A, B, C …’ and proceeded to recite the entire alphabet. Then he told the priest, ‘I don’t really know the prayers, so I just say the alphabet, and I tell myself that God will rearrange the letters to form the words that I need.’"
So … If we want to pray well, perhaps we should focus more on the relationship than worry about the words … because the most important part of prayer is that we do it … and that we allow ourselves to be transformed by our through our relationship with God.
APPLICATION: Being Patient in Prayer
Finally, Jesus makes some bold statements in today’s Gospel passage.
He says that whoever asks will receive, whoever seeks will find, and whoever knocks will get the door opened.
However, when life is going smoothly, it is easy to believe this truth of our faith; that God Answers Every Prayer.
But when a crisis hits, when we face an urgent: material; emotional; or spiritual need; our faith is sometimes put to the test.
- Those moments are very valuable for our spiritual growth.
- They give us an opportunity to exercise the virtue of supernatural patience, and when we exercise that, our faith gets stronger.
Natural patience is easier to develop than supernatural patience.
- Natural patience doesn't require that we trust God, it only requires that we trust in ourselves.
- Supernatural patience, on the other hand, means asking God insistently for what we need, and letting God choose the right moment to act.
And he will act. He has given us undeniable proof of this in the Eucharist.
- The Eucharist is like a promissory note, a pledge: Jesus gives us himself at every Mass in order to prove that his generosity has no limits.
- And so, if God chooses not to answer our prayers when or how we wanted, we know without a doubt that it is not because he is stingy.
- Rather, it's because his wisdom and love are cooking up something better than what we can envision.
- Jesus knows it's sometimes hard for us to wait, and so he leaves us the Eucharist as a pledge of the goodness yet to come, as an anchor in stormy seas.
Therefore, I invite you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, to cultivate a life of prayer, marked by faith, persistence, and humility. Let us not be afraid to ask God for what we need, trusting that He will provide for us all that is good … and as He comes to us today in Holy Communion, may we also remember to thank Him for His countless blessings and to seek His guidance in all that we do.
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