Persevering Faithfully in Prayer and Life, 27th Thursday (II), October 8, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
October 8, 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 might 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 seven years ago why God wants us to pray with perseverance. “Why does God want this? Doesn’t he already know what we need? … 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 I celebrate the 22nd anniversary of my diaconal ordination at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, together with my classmates at the North American College. Like the anniversary of your profession, it’s an opportunity for me to thank God for the grace of his persevering fidelity and to recommit myself wholeheartedly to doing what I promised to do on that day, to being like Christ the servant, seeking to become the servant of the rest. There are three essential works of a deacon, which flow from the three-fold munus of Christ we receive in Baptism: proclaiming the Gospel (munus docendi) , celebrating  and participating in the Sacraments (munus sanctificandi, especially Baptism and Marriage), and diakonia, or charity (munus regendi). But to be done well, they must be done prayerfully: prayerful preaching, prayerful celebration of the Sacraments and prayer, prayerful charity. Each must be done by the gift of the Holy Spirit, who helps us to preach with tongues of fire and hearts burning for each work that comes from God’s mouth, who works through us in the Sacraments as he sanctifies us with his gifts so that we might be better instruments of his sanctifying others, and who inspires us to serve not as a social worker but in communion with Christ and an expression of his charity. Today is a day in which we consecrate ourselves anew to the help of the Holy Spirit so that we may fulfill what we were ordained to do. It’s a day in which we ask, seek and knock for us to become fully whom God desires and deserves.
• As we at Mass approach the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Christ to ask, seek, knock, we open ourselves to the manifold ways God responds. And God responds by giving principally 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. Paul did and as God calls each of us to do.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
lk 11:5-13

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Suppose one of you has a friend
to whom he goes at midnight and says,
‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,
for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey
and I have nothing to offer him,’
and he says in reply from within,
‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked
and my children and I are already in bed.
I cannot get up to give you anything.’
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.

“And 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;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
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?”

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