Homily for the Week of July 28, 2013

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C, 2013 PRAYER Genesis 18:20-32 Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8 Colossians 2:12-14 Luke 11:1-13 Most of us are great on finding answers to How to. Search on the internet, and you will soon learn how to tie a tie, boil an egg, or even train your dragon. The followers of Jesus were no different. They were not a bunch of guys who suddenly got religion. Being Jews they would have gone to the synagogue every weekend. They would have heard readings from the Bible and then sermons on the readings. They had often seen Jesus go off by himself and pray. So you can imagine that they wanted Jesus to teach them how to prayer. So he taught them the prayer that most of you know by heart: the Lord’s Prayer. I have just read a version of the Lord’s Prayer as given to us in the Gospel of Luke The one with which you are more familiar is in the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark. Prayer was always spoken aloud in Jesus’ day. There was no concept of “silent prayer.” It was believed that for a prayer to exist it had to spoken aloud. The Gospels are full of references to Jesus’ prayers being overheard. Because prayer could be overheard, how a person prayed revealed what that person believed. It could also reveal who a person’s teacher was simply by the style of prayer. This is because personal identity did not exist as we experience it today. Identity was really corporate and not the sense of self or the individualism that we have in the modern world. Everything about people was wrapped up in the groups to which they belonged: family, town, tribe, nation. Because of this corporate identity, there was no concept of “private prayer” as we recognize it. People could pray alone, but they still prayed aloud, making the sense of the prayer still communal. Mostly when we think of prayer we think of asking for things. When we are in need of God’s help, it is appropriate to ask for it. Yet there is a more important reason to pray than simply to tell God we need something. The more important reason is to build a relationship with God. Relationships cannot exist without communication. We can really say that the quality of our relationship with someone depends on the quality of our communication with that person. Because the ability to communicate is something we have to learn, hundreds of books are written to help us improve our skill in that area. We need to learn how to communicate with God just as we need to learn how to communicate with one another. Because God is greater than we are, communication with God can be more difficult. Even with the third commandment telling us that we need to spend time with God at least once a week, we can often find the slightest reason to avoid putting time aside for God. Jesus knew that prayer has its difficulties. That is why we tells us not to give up. There are lots of people who get religious only when they want something.. When they pray and don’t get what they ask for, they are convinced that prayers does not work. Jesus tells us it does. The think is that we get too impatient and we want things right away. Too often we forget that when we pray we forget that our prayers are addressed to Our Father. As we know sometimes fathers say no or not yet, or I don’t think that would be a good idea. Notice that Jesus tells in to say thy will be done. Prayer is always an expression of our faith -- of what we believe. That is why prayer is not easy because is not easy. When we start praying we enter into a dialogue much like Abraham had with God in our first reading. We need to tell God what we would like, but at the same time we believe that it is God who has the last word, not us. And that last word is that God wants our everlasting happiness. He even tells us to pray for thy kingdom come. Jesus does tell us to ask and we will receive. He does not tell us that we might receive or maybe we will receive, but we will receive. What God is really telling us that no prayer is ever wasted. Prayer always brings us some blessing although it may not be exactly what we want. Since God knows us so well, we must conclude that if God does not give us what we ask for, then he has something better in mind. And that is partly why people give up on prayer. They do not have faith in God’s wisdom and love. Prayer always works even when we do not see immediate results. Having said all of this it does happen to most of us that we get discouraged in prayer. We get distracted or go off on some other thought. If you do not get distracted in prayer then you have to be brain dead. Distractions are normal. Even when we try to pray we have to believe that God reaches out to us. God is pleased that we are reaching out to him. We can fill our mind with excuses for not praying: such as it doesn’t work; you’re wasting your time; its boring; you have too many other things to do; you are too tired now, and so forth. Don;t ever quit prayer no matter what. Prayer will always bring you great blessings, and more important, it will bring you a deeper relationship with God. We now continue the greatest prayer of all: the prayer of the Mass and Holy Eucharist.