Homily for July 24

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Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Scriptures for today's Mass)

Audio for homily
 

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Just a few moments ago we sang,

“Lord, on the day when I called for help, you answered me…”

So, have you ever prayed for something

and got just what you asked for?

Have you ever prayed for something

and didn’t get what you asked for?

Or have you ever prayed for one thing

and got something else

that you didn’t want at all?

As Abraham did, have you ever bargained with God in prayer,

hoping to talk the Lord into doing what you want?

Abraham’s story is much more about persistent familiarity with God

than it is about getting what you want.

Jesus counsels the same in the gospel today,

inviting us to trust God just as we might trust a best friend

and to trust that God, a good parent,

will never give his children anything bad or harmful

and will always give us the power of his Spirit

to help us through whatever hard times we face.

But as true as the word of Jesus is, I know the pain

(my own and others’)

the pain of praying persistently for something

and not having my prayer answered as I had hoped,

as I had prayed, it might be.

Especially when times are tough

and we’re praying for something that is good and even selfless,

it’s hard to understand why our all-powerful God seems passive,

not intervening as we’re pleading that he will.

Like you, I have no inside info on the mind of God,

on how and why God chooses to respond to our prayer as he does.

But there is something to be said about how we pray.

One writer has described prayer in this way:

            Prayer is the place where we sort out our desires

            and where we ourselves are sorted out

            by the desires we choose to follow.

            Prayer enlarges our desire
            until it receives God’s desire for us.
            In prayer, we grow big enough

            to house God’s desire within us…*

Our wants, our needs, our desires are many - and we pray for them.

Some of what we want and pray for is very good - some, not so good.

Some needs are selfless - and some are selfish.

Some desires shape our lives for the better and others - not so much.

In so many ways our lives are shaped by what we desire,

what we long for,

what we believe we need and just can’t do without.

And these all need to be sorted out in prayer.

It’s certainly good and commendable to pray for particular needs,

and for the needs of particular persons.

But what of our prayer outside out times of need?

- Do we sit down with the Lord, regularly,

and pray that he help us sort out

our wants, needs,  and desires?

- Do we ask the Lord, regularly, to help us see - and critique -

how our desires and choices are shaping us and our happiness?

- Suppose that in my prayer, instead of asking God for this or for that,

suppose I were to ask him,

 “Lord what do you ask of me?  What do you want from me?”

- Suppose I were to pray,

 “Lord, give me only whatever I need

to become the person you made me to be.”

- Suppose that in my prayer, I would regularly ask

for the wisdom to know which doors to knock on,

the wisdom to knock only those doors that will open

to what’s truly good for me and truly good for others?

If we were to pray in these ways,

imagine how differently we might hear Jesus’ words when he says:

 “Everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds;

and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

What are do we ask for?

What do we seek?

Upon which doors are we knocking?

            Prayer is the place where we sort out our desires

            and where we ourselves are sorted out

            by the desires we choose to follow.

            Prayer enlarges our desire
            until it receives God’s desire for us.
            In prayer, we grow big enough

            to house God’s desire in us…

God’s desire in us is his Spirit

the very Spirit he promises to those who pray, who seek, who knock.

And this place where we’ve gathered is a place for “sorting things out.”

- Once a week we set aside our own needs and wants to come here,

to gather with our brothers and sisters in prayer.

- We began by praying for God’s mercy and forgiveness

for the times we chose to seek and ask for the wrong things,

for the times we knocked on the wrong doors.

We listen to God’s Word, hoping that the Lord’s wisdom

might help us sort out our own lives and the choices we make

that shape our lives and our happiness.

And we to go to the Lord’s Table,

praying that our hearts have grown large enough

to house God’s desire dwelling within us

in the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.

So, let us pray…

that the Lord will help us sort out our own desires

and allow ourselves to be sorted out by his grace;

that the Lord open us and help us receive what we truly need;

that he help us seek what we truly need to find;

that he will open for us those doors

that lead all of us deeper into his heart.

*Ann and Barry Ulanov in: Primary Speech: a Psychology of Prayer

                                   

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