Ordinary 17

The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

Who taught you to pray?

How do you pray?

Do you experience the presence of God through nature or listen intently to music?

Do you meditate with the Rosary or with Sacred Scripture?

Do you contemplate works of art whether religious or abstract to lead you to God or do you use forms of meditative prayer like the Jesus Prayer or Taize Prayer?

Do you use devotional and traditional Catholic prayers handed down through the    ages or do you sit in silence?

Do you pray with the Psalms or regularly journal reflecting on where you experience God in your daily life  and the meaning of those experiences?

Do you pray through devotion to a particular patron saint or through the Little Blue, Black and White Books?

Do you reflect on the writings of the saints or contemporary  spiritual authors?

Do you pray best in the car, in the church, on a walk, at night in bed, early in the morning?

There are a myriad ways of praying personally and individually in our Catholic tradition. Yet even the desire to pray is always initiated by God. This prompting by the Holy Spirit means that the most important part of prayer is simply to “show up”; to give in to the invitation to pray. How each of us personally prays is not as important as that each of us regularly pray.

Throughout Luke’s Gospel Jesus is portrayed as regularly withdrawing to deserted places often spending entire nights in prayer. Jesus prays before he chooses his apostles and in giving thanks when he fed the thousands on bread and fish. He groans in grief as he prays before he raises Lazarus from the dead and in fear for himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. At the Last Supper on the night before he died, Jesus prayed for you and me who were in the future to believe. From the cross he prayed Psalms 22 and 31 as he was dying.  Prayer was a regular part of Jesus’ life. Thus the disciples asked a master pray-er, “Lord, teach us to pray…” 

How has your prayer-life matured over the years? 

Have you tried other forms of prayer beyond what you were taught early in life to expand your experience of conversing with God?

Of what shape does your prayer life consist? The praise of God?  Giving thanks to God?  Asking forgiveness of God for your sins?  Asking God to help you become more like Jesus?

Is your prayer primarily for yourself or for other people?

Do you pray for what you need…or what you want?

Do you pray before major life decisions?  For example, which college or job to choose; who to marry; what vocation you should enter; whether you should move; before making a medical decision for yourself or a loved one; for the strength and insight to reach out to approach a difficult person or situation in your life or family.

Do you pray in your grief, in your sadness, in your fears?

I have always been uncomfortable when people speak of the “power” of prayer. It sounds to me like we have power over God and to have power over God is to believe in a God that is not God. Do you believe prayer controls or changes God’s mind? I don’t – and why would you want to change God’s plan for you?  Does not God already want the best for each of us?

I believe to enter into pray, to enter into the presence of the divine changes and forms us in Jesus Christ.  Prayer conforms us to God’s vision and will not conforming God to our will.

What then are your expectations from prayer?  How do you feel or react when you don’t seem to obtain what you asked for in prayer?  Jesus seems to be very straight forward in his teaching: “Ask and you will receive…for everyone who asks, receives; seek and you will find…and the person who seeks, finds; knock and the door will be opened to you.” But take note, ask and you will receive does not say you will receive what you asked for but that you will receive…maybe what God knows you need?  The seeking person will find but find what?  Something better, richer, deeper than what they were looking for?  There are many doors in life and the one we are knocking on may not be the one we should walk through and so another door is opened.  Yet how often have we been stubborn and oblivious to the open doors in our life because we keep knocking on the locked door we think we want to enter?

Abram did not get what he prayed for. Abram’s prayer did not save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which were destroyed. But he did receive in return the life of his nephew Lot and his family.

Have you always received what you prayed for?  No?  Might you have been unaware of what you did receive from God instead? Have you thus given up on prayer as if it is a “quid pro quo”, a trade-off and God did not keep his side of the deal?

Prayer is not rattling off a bunch of Hail Marys or Our Fathers.  It is entering into an intimate relationship with God; a relationship of trust.

We live in uncertain times.  It is a time in which we need to trust each other.

It is a time to pray.