Living According to the Holy Spirit Given in Prayer, 27th Thursday (II), October 11, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Pope St. John XXIII
October 11, 2018
Gal 3:1-5, Lk 1:69-75, Lk 11:5-13

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he began by teaching them that the secret of prayer is to approach God as a loving Father. Once we do, almost everything flows. We begin to seek the glory and sanctification of his name and the building of his kingdom not only because we love Him but also because we know that, as his sons and daughters, we share that name and are heirs of that kingdom. Once we relate to him as a Loving Father than we trust in his providence to give us each day what we need and in his mercy to forgive us when we err because he loves us more than he detests the sins that hurt us and wound our relationship with him. When we relate to him as a Loving Father we trust him not to put us in a position in which we’ll fail the ultimate test but to challenge us and help us to meet those challenges that are beyond what we think are possible.
• Today Jesus continues his responding to our request to teach us how to pray by illustrating for us how to persevere in prayer. He gives us a parable based on middle eastern customs of hospitality. Especially during the summer months when the sun is most brutal, many Jews would travel at night and so it was not unheard of that a guest would arrive at your home — in the days before not only phones, texts and emails but also before a postal system that was affordable and efficient — unannounced at night, famished after a long journey. Because bread was baked normally in the morning, it’s possible that all the bread had already been eaten. That’s why you’d go to your neighbors to ask if they had anything to share. The second thing to understand about middle eastern culture is that their doors were open all day long but when they were shut and locked, that meant that the entire family and all their animals had gone to bed. They’d sleep together in an interior part of the house to stay warm during the typical middle eastern radiational cooling at night. To get up to answer the door when a neighbor was knocking at midnight meant that one would likely be stepping on one’s children, one’s animals and waking everyone up. It’s understandable that one would want to wait to share bread until the morning. But Jesus says that because of the perseverance of the neighbor, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” Jesus mentions this as a lesson in prayer precisely in order to contrast that motivation with one of God. He was saying, “If a neighbor would eventually give in because of harassment, think about how God will respond out of love?” That led Jesus to say, “I tell you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks the door will be opened.” Notice that he doesn’t say that one will receive, find or have the door opened immediately. He also doesn’t say that one will receive and find exactly what one expected to find. But he does promise God will respond, precisely because God is a loving Father who always responds first and foremost by giving himself. That’s why Jesus said, “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” God sends the Holy Spirit not just to those who ask for the Holy Spirit but for those who ask, seek, or knock for anything, and he does so precisely because he loves us and provides what we really need beyond what we desire or explicitly request. God sends the Holy Spirit not only to help us to pray, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but as the answer to our prayers, because what we always ultimately need in response to any good thing we ask for, for ourselves or for others, is God. We’ll return to this in a moment.
• The question I would like to answer now, however, is why God doesn’t answer our prayers immediately if he loves us. Why does he want us to persevere in knocking like the neighbor for bread? Why does he want us to spend hours, days, months even years seeking in order to find? He does so precisely so that we may learn how to persevere in life. Pope Francis asked in an Angelus meditation five years ago why God wants us to pray with perseverance. “Why does God want this? Doesn’t he already know what we need? … This is a good question that makes us examine an important aspect of the faith: God invites us to pray insistently not because he is unaware of our needs or because he is not listening to us. On the contrary, he is always listening and he knows everything about us lovingly.” But because we pray as we live and live as we pray, he wants to develop in us through prayer the type of perseverance we need to remain faithful in life. “On our daily journey, especially in times of difficulty, in the battle against the evil that is outside and within us,” Pope Francis continued, “the Lord is not far away, he is by our side. We battle with him beside us, and our weapon is prayer which makes us feel his presence beside us, his mercy and also his help. But the battle against evil is a long and hard one; it requires patience and endurance. … Indeed persevering prayer is the expression of faith in a God who calls us to fight with him every day and at every moment in order to conquer evil with good.” Persevering prayer helps us to learn the persevering faith we have to have to fight the good fight so as to win.
• We see the importance of perseverance as well as of the Holy Spirit in today’s first reading, when St. Paul sternly corrects the Christians in Galatia for their lack of perseverance in the life according to the Holy Spirit to which Paul introduced them. They had instead gone over to a false gospel that taught that they would be saved not by grace, not by God, not by faithful response to God’s help, but rather by their own participation in the Jewish “works of the law” such as circumcision, dietary practices and the like. St. Paul didn’t mince words when he said, “O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you — literally given you the evil eye — before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Did they not realize, he was saying, that they were saved by what Christ accomplished on the Cross? ” I want to learn only this from you,” he continued. “Did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? … Does, then, the one who supplies the Spirit to you and works mighty deeds among you do so from works of the law or from faith in what you heard?” They had failed to live according to God, beseeching his help in prayer, receiving the Holy Spirit he always sends, counting on the graces Christ won for us on Calvary. Instead they began to focus on their own works. Sometimes we’re as foolish as the Galatians, but Paul wants to give us the wisdom that flows from persevering dependence on God in prayer and in life.
• Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of Pope St. John XXIII and I’d like to focus on two things about him that correspond to today’s readings. The first is the way that he was icon of the love of God the Father whom Jesus reveals and to whom Jesus teaches us to pray. He was called “Il Papa Buono,” the Good Pope or Daddy, in his lifetime because of the way he tenderly loved others with a father’s heart and encouragement. Many of us have images of God the Father as a tough Old Testamentarian disciplinarian who is constantly angry and disappointed at us for all of our failings to become a saint. John XXIII showed us the image of a Father who was rich in mercy, who smiled, who loved. That’s why so many loved him. The night before the opening of the Second Vatican Council, he told parents in his memorable “moonlight speech” to the throngs who had assembled in St. Peter’s Square to go home, hug their kids and say, “This is a hug from the Pope.” People never forgot it, because it showed the affection of God through his vicar and icon. The second thing he teaches us is confidence in the work of the Holy Spirit and cooperation with him at a personal and pastoral level. The Second Vatican Council was a surprise to try to launch a second Pentecost, to open the windows of the Church for the Holy Spirit to come in with his tongues of fire to propose the Gospel in a compelling way to the people of today. But he knew that the Church’s prayer would solicit God’s gift of himself and he boldly launched forward despite opposition from those around him.
• His lifetime of prayer has continued similarly after his death. The story of the miracle that led to his beatification and canonization (because Pope Francis waived the need for a second miracle) is one of my favorite miracles, one that’s very fitting surrounded as I am here by young religious. It happened to Sr. Caterina Capitani, a 22 year-old Daughter of Charity in 1966. She had suffered a hemorrhage following an operation and had multiple stomach ailments. Here’s what she said in 2000: “On May 22, a sister brought me a relic of Pope John’s from Rome: a piece of the sheet upon which the Pope had died. I placed it on the perforation which had opened on my stomach, and since I was suffering quite a bit, I prayed to the Pope to take me to Heaven. I was slowly dying. I felt that my strength was leaving me. My temperature was very high. A sister guarded the room day and night. On 25 May, at around 2:30 in the afternoon, I asked a sister who was guarding the room to close the window a little because the light bothered me. She did so, and then left the room for a few minutes. I drifted off to sleep. At a certain point I felt a hand pressing the wound on my stomach and the voice of a man saying: ‘Sister Caterina, Sister Caterina.’ I thought it was Doctor Zannini, who came to check on me occasionally. I turned towards the voice, and saw Pope John standing beside my bed: he had the same smile as the image that had been given me. He was the one who was holding his hand on my wound. ‘You prayed to me very much,’ he said with a calm voice. ‘Many people have prayed to me, but especially one. You have really taken this miracle from my heart. But don’t be afraid now, you are healed. Ring the bell, call the sisters who are in the chapel, have them take your temperature and you will see that you will not have even the slightest temperature. Eat whatever you want, as you did before the sickness: I will hold my hand on your wound, and you will be healed. Go to the Doctor, have him examine you, have some x-rays done and have it all written down, because these things will be needed someday.’ The vision disappeared, and only then did I begin to realize what had happened. I wondered whether it had been a dream. I was trembling from the emotion and fear. I felt well. I felt no pain, but I didn’t dare call the sisters: they would have thought I was crazy. After several minutes, I had to decide. I did what the Pope had told me to: I rang the bell. The sisters hurried to my bedside. They found me sitting up on the bed. They looked at me as if they were dreaming. I could no longer stifle my joy, and I almost shouted: ‘I have been healed. It was Pope John. Measure my fever, you’ll see that I have none.’ Mother Superior thought I was delirious, as sometimes happens before death. They took my temperature: 36.8 C (98.2 F.). ‘Do you see?,’  I said, challenging them. ‘Now give me something to eat because I’m hungry.’ I hadn’t been able to hold anything down in my stomach for many months. Mother Superior, who was almost hypnotized by my state of excitement, ordered the sisters to do as I asked. A sister brought me some semolina (bread/cake), which I ate voraciously, to the astonishment of my sisters. Then they brought me an ice cream, and I ate that too. ‘I’m still hungry,’ I said. The sister brought me some meatballs, and I ate those, followed by some soup, and I devoured that as well. At this point, the Mother Superior, who was still not convinced of what was happening, said: ‘Now we have to change you,’ thinking that everything I had eaten had gone out of the fistula that had opened on my stomach, which is what always happened. They lay me down on the bed. A nurse brought gauze and a clean nightgown. They uncovered me. The nurse shouted: ‘But there’s nothing here.’ The sisters fell on their knees, crying from emotion. Until a few minutes earlier the skin on my stomach had been one big wound: the gastric fluids that continually flowed out of the fistula had corroded the skin. The wound had completely disappeared. There was no sign of the fistula, not a trace: the skin was smooth, clean and white. So I told them what had happened. From that day on,” concludes Sister Caterina, “I haven’t been ill at all. The doctors examined me, did scores of x-rays. There wasn’t a trace of my illness. The day after the miracle I went back to a normal life. My first lunch was french fries, roasted lamb, tomatoes and ice cream. I went back to eating anything I wanted. That was 34 years ago [in 2000]: I’m well, I have no problems of digestion, and I work with enthusiasm.”
• That’s a sign of what happens when we ask, seek, knock and we open ourselves to the manifold ways God responds. Today as we pray the Mass, we ask the Lord to allow St. John XXIII to touch us in a way that brings us great healing, and get ready to receive how God gives himself, first in the Holy Eucharist, and then in the post-consecratory epiclesis when the Holy Spirit descends to make us one body, one Spirit, in Christ, and to help us live wisely according to the Holy Spirit as St. John XXIII did.

The readings for today’s Mass were: