Saturday, October 16, 2010

XXIX-Sunday in Ordinary time

XXIX SUNDAY Ex 17:8-13;: II Tim 3:14- 4:5;Gosple: Luke 18: 1-8

A rural newspaper had been running a series of articles on the value of church attendance in its Sunday Religion column. One day, the editor received a letter which read: "Print this if you dare. I am trying an experiment. I have a field of corn which I plowed on Sunday. I planted it on Sunday. I did all the cultivating on Sunday. I gathered the harvest on Sunday and hauled it to my barn on Sunday. I find that my harvest this October is just as great as any of my neighbors who went to church on Sunday. So where was God all this time?" The editor printed the letter, but added his reply at the bottom: "Your mistake lies in thinking that God always settles his accounts in October." We who believe in the power of prayer often wrongly think that our persevering prayers will force God to act when and how we want Him to act, according to our timetable and according to our desire.

Today’s readings are mainly about perseverance in prayer. In the first reading, Moses, after sending Joshua to fight against the Amalekites, is presented as making tireless intercessions with constancy for the victory of Israel’s army. Both Moses and the widow in this gospel story teach us how we should pray in time of urgency.
In the first reading the urgency is more obvious, for if there is not a speedy resolution, then there is defeat. Amalek has come to wage war against Israel, and Israel must defend itself then and there. To wait is simply to allow oneself to be slaughtered. There also seems to be a degree of urgency in the widow's plea for a just decision against her adversary. She does not seem to be able or willing to wait for the judge to take action in his time. She wants resolution now. Her persistence was a very public event and the entire community witnessed the widow’s repeated encounters with the judge. By publicly badgering the judge every day, the woman was trying to shame this shameless person. Finally the unjust judge was forced to yield. There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about their situations.
Two frogs fell into a bowl of deep cream.They tried every way to get out of there, but could not. One was wise, and cheery. The other one took a gloomy view and resigned to its fate and drowned without trying. The merry frog said: "I can't get out, but I won't give in; I'll swim around till my strength is spent, then I will die more content." And as he swam, his struggling began to churn the cream and finally a layer of butter was formed and he was able to hop out stepping on the layer of butter. Success is for those who persevere in their effort. Constancy in prayer is faith in action which leads to success.

The early Christians found themselves in such an apparently hopeless predicament. Soon after Jesus left them they found themselves persecuted and oppressed by the Jewish religious hierarchy. What encouraged them to endure the persecution was their belief that the Second Coming of the Lord was soon to take place. They believed it would coincide with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. But when in AD 70 Jerusalem fell and the Temple was destroyed yet Jesus was nowhere to be seen, the Christians found themselves in a big crisis of faith. Have they hoped in vain? Will the Lord ever come back to reestablish justice, to vindicate the innocent and put their enemies to shame? Should they continue hoping and resisting the injustice of their oppressors or should they just join them since they can't beat them? In other words, the early Christians found themselves in the situation of this widow who, without her husband, her lord, had to wage a campaign of passive resistance against injustice and oppression without knowing when it might come to an end. That is why the parable ends with the words of reassurance and a probing question: And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth? (Luke 18:7-8)

The practical implication of the parable for daily Christian living is given, namely that we "ought always to pray and not lose heart" (verse 1). Prayer expresses our hope and nourishes our faith. If we only pray when we feel like it, or when we are facing a crisis, we will never be constant in prayer - our prayer will depend on our mood. But then we will never develop that mature confidence in God that makes us spiritually strong, wise, and solid. We will remain spiritual infants - crying when we want something, and oblivious to God when we don't.
Just as the judge would not have acted unless the widow had pleaded with him, God also has decided to make his graces depend (at least in part) upon our prayers. "Ask, and it will be given to you," our Lord pointed out earlier (Luke 11:9). "Search and you will find..."

Sometimes our lack of confidence in God comes from not understanding why he sometimes delays answering our prayers.
Why does he delay?
There is no reluctance on God's side. It is about us. We do often ask God for things out of mere politeness and for the sake of good form. In the ‘Prayers of the Faithful’ at Mass, especially, we slip easily into this. The very things we prayed for yesterday, thinking they would make us comfortable were not really things we needed for our life. So we have to ask many times before we know what we want, or before we know with our whole being that we want it. Would I go through fire and water for it? If not, I don’t really want it; I would like it but I don’t want it. If I really wanted it, God would give it immediately, granting that it was God's providence for me.

God doesn't want us to become spoiled children. Spoiled children get everything they ask for right when they ask for it. And as a result, they don't value anything they get. Human nature tends to value what it has to work for. This also applies to our spiritual life. God wants to give us spiritual gifts, lasting, transforming, eternally valuable spiritual gifts, but he won't give them to us until we are ready to receive them.

And sometimes, getting ready means growing in the awareness of our need for God's help. And there's no better way to do that than to have God delay in giving us what we ask for. In other words, the more we pray for what we need, the humbler we become, and the humbler we become, the more spiritual gifts God can pour into our hearts.
St Augustine explained it like this: Suppose you want to fill some sort of bag, and you know the bulk of what you will be given, you stretch the bag or the sack or whatever it is. You know how big the object that you want to put in is, and you see that the bag is narrow, so you increase its capacity by stretching it. In the same way, by delaying the fulfillment of desire God stretches it, by making us desire, he expands the soul, and by this expansion he increases its capacity. God sees time whole, and, therefore, only God knows what is good for us in the long run. That is why Jesus said that we must never be discouraged in prayer. Instead we have to leave the answer to God’s decision saying, “Thy will be done.”

Persistent prayer reshapes our hearts to God's original design. Such prayer does not change God; instead, it changes us. Sincere and persistent prayer makes us ready to accept His will. In Priests for the Third Millennium, Bishop Timothy Dolan observes that prayer must become like eating and breathing. We have to eat daily, not stock up on food on Monday, and then take off the rest of the week. Do we take ten deep breaths and say, “Good, that’s over for a while, I won’t have to breathe for a couple of hours?” No. SO our prayer also should be regular and constant.
Some times God fulfills our needs in ways we haven’t even dreamed of.
There was a good lady who lived next door to an atheist. Everyday, when the lady prayed, the atheist guy could hear her. He thought to himself, "She sure is crazy, praying all the time like that. Doesn't she know there is no GOD!" Many times while she was praying, he would go to her house and harass her, saying, "Lady, why do you pray all the time? Don't you know there is no GOD!" But she kept on praying.

One day, she ran out of groceries. As usual, she was praying to the Lord explaining her situation and thanking Him for what He was going to do. As usual, the atheist heard her praying and thought to himself, "Humph...I'll fix her. He put a bag of groceries at her door and waited behind the bush to see what the lady would do. The next morning as the lady opened the door she found the groceries and said: O Lord, thank you for sending me these groceries. Immediately the atheist guy came out of the bush and proclaimed, it is not God who sent it to you, I put it here for you. See I told you there is no God. The lady shouted again Alleluiah, thank you God not only for sending these groceries and but you made Satan to pay for them.

God is intimately present in all the turmoil and terror of life, vindicating those who cry out in faith. God is, in fact, with us, even before the cry for help leaves our mouth. God is present, experiencing our pain and distress, and Jesus is the guarantee. Let us ask God today to make us strong in our faith, unwavering in our hope, and persistent in our prayer.

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