SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Put Your Life in Your Prayer
It would perhaps be much easier for us to pray if prayer would not be just a compartment in life, some moments we reserve for certain places and occasions and times of special needs. Prayer is less a way of obtaining favors from God than a way of expressing to our Father in heaven, to Jesus or to the Spirit our trust in God, speaking about our life, our difficulties and our joys, entrusting to God those who are dear to us in life or in death and even recommending to him those who cause us trouble. And remember, in praying we do not try to bend God to our will but we ask that we may do his will. How long ago have we prayed this way?
First Reading: Genesis 18:20-32
God continued, “The cries of the victims in Sodom and Gomorrah are deafening; the sin of those cities is immense. I’m going down to see for myself, see if what they’re doing is as bad as it sounds. Then I’ll know.”
The men set out for Sodom, but Abraham stood in God’s path, blocking his way.
Abraham confronted him, “Are you serious? Are you planning on getting rid of the good people right along with the bad? What if there are fifty decent people left in the city; will you lump the good with the bad and get rid of the lot? Wouldn’t you spare the city for the sake of those fifty innocents? I can’t believe you’d do that, kill off the good and the bad alike as if there were no difference between them. Doesn’t the Judge of all the Earth judge with justice?”
God said, “If I find fifty decent people in the city of Sodom, I’ll spare the place just for them.”
Abraham came back, “Do I, a mere mortal made from a handful of dirt, dare open my mouth again to my Master? What if the fifty fall short by five—would you destroy the city because of those missing five?”
He said, “I won’t destroy it if there are forty-five.”
Abraham spoke up again, “What if you only find forty?”
“Neither will I destroy it if for forty.”
He said, “Master, don’t be irritated with me, but what if only thirty are found?”
“No, I won’t do it if I find thirty.”
He pushed on, “I know I’m trying your patience, Master, but how about for twenty?”
“I won’t destroy it for twenty.”
He wouldn’t quit, “Don’t get angry, Master—this is the last time. What if you only come up with ten?”
“For the sake of only ten, I won’t destroy the city.”
Second Reading: Colossians 2:12-14
It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross.
Gospel: Luke 11:1-13
One day he was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said, “Master, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”
So he said, “When you pray, say,
Father,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.”
Then he said, “Imagine what would happen if you went to a friend in the middle of the night and said, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread. An old friend traveling through just showed up, and I don’t have a thing on hand.’
“The friend answers from his bed, ‘Don’t bother me. The door’s locked; my children are all down for the night; I can’t get up to give you anything.’
“But let me tell you, even if he won’t get up because he’s a friend, if you stand your ground, knocking and waking all the neighbors, he’ll finally get up and get you whatever you need.
“Here’s what I’m saying:
Ask and you’ll get;
Seek and you’ll find;
Knock and the door will open.
“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing—you’re at least decent to your own children. And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?”
Prayer
God our Father,
we too are asking your Son
to teach us how to pray
and he has told us to speak to you with all trust.
Make us bold enough to pray insistently to you
and to keep asking for what we need
until in your kindness you give it,
to keep seeking until we find.
Do not allow us to forget to pray also
for the needs of others
and first of all for the things that matter:
you and your will and your kingdom.
We ask you this in the name of Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Reflection:
24 July 2022
Luke 11: 1-13
“I dare to call him Father”
Luke the evangelist records seven occasions of Jesus’s prayer. No evangelist insists so much on the subject of prayer as Luke. The whole life of Jesus was marked by his prayer life. Today’s passage is a catechesis on prayer. The Lord’s prayer is more like the Apostles’ Creed because, it is a complete compendium of faith and of Christian life.
In the early Church, the catechumens directly learned this prayer from the mouth of the bishop. During the Easter Vigil, they recited it for the first time together with their communities.
Jesus teaches us to address God as “our Father” because “before we were being formed in secret, and woven in the depths of the earth” (Ps 109:15), God the Father thought about us and loved us! He wants us to stand before the Father with confidence and ask for the things we need to live as his sons and daughters. No other religion except Christianity presents God as the Father and Mother of the people.
When we ask: ‘Hallowed be your name,’ we declare to the Father our willingness to get involved in glorifying his name, and to collaborate with him in fulfilling his promises of “you shall be my people and I will be your God” (Ezk. 36:23-28).
“Thy kingdom come,” we pray. Jesus has taught us that the Kingdom has already come. The time of waiting is over. However, we continue to pray for its coming because, it must develop and grow in every person as a seed of goodness, of love, of reconciliation, and of peace. Prayer makes us to discern between the values of this world and the values of the Kingdom of God.
We cannot recite the Lord’s Prayer with sincerity, if we think only of our own bread, greedy of possession and with anguish of tomorrow, forgetting the poor, and neglecting social justice. It amounts to saying: “Help me, Father, to be content with the necessary, to be free from the bondage of greed and strengthen me to share with the poor.”
God’s forgiveness has only one requirement – that we cultivate love and forgiveness for ourbrothers and sisters and be reconciled with them first.
And the temptation from which we ask to be saved does not refer to the small weaknesses, struggles of life and persecutions. They do make us stumble and can choke the seed of the Word of God in us. But, Jesus wants us to pray that we must be kept away from the temptation of abandoning our faith in God, the loving and merciful Father.
The parable of the man who went to ask a friend to help him with three loaves reiterates the importance of insistence and consistency in prayer.
Prolonged prayers are not intended to persuade God to change his plans! Prayer does not change God; instead it opens our minds, changes our hearts.