Luke 7:36 – 8:3
During my career as a physician who
specialized in cancer, many of my patients prayed very hard to be rid
of their cancers. It never seemed as though prayer did anything; I
saw people who didn't believe in God beat the disease and people who
were about as religious as you could get die of cancer. And if your
experience is like mine, you have to admit that there are times when
your prayers don't seem to have been answered; and when they are
answered the way you had hoped, you can usually find another
explanation. And yet today's first reading and our gospel seem to
encourage us to keep asking until we get what we want, and they also
sort of promise that if we ask long enough and hard enough we will
get what we pray for.
But when we see prayer as the means by
which we get God to do something for us, I think we've missed the
point.
The apostles weren't different from
us. They weren't new to prayer; they probably prayed a great deal,
both in the synagogue on Saturdays and privately. And they didn't
see their prayers being answered either – at least the way they
wanted them to be. And down through the ages we've heard the same
old cliches – God always answers our prayer, but sometimes the
answer in “no”. Or God didn 't answer my prayer because he knows
that if he did it wouldn't be good for me.” Or, God didn't answer
my prayer because I am a sinner, or I didn't say the prayer right, or
I didn't pray hard enough. Back in the shrine to Mary you will
sometimes find little leaflets telling you how to say the prayer to
Saint Jude. If you say it nine times a day for nine days, you will
get what you pray for. And there are a lot of those kinds of things
floating around. If only you prayed in the right way …. If only
you could discover the secret of prayer. And so Jesus' apostles ask
“Lord, teach us to pray”. Because as far as they could tell,
Jesus always got his prayers answered.
Jesus gives us the secret today in the
gospel. First, he gives us an example of how to pray. You start out
by praising God, by sincerely expressing that you want what God
wants; you want his kingdom to come on earth, as it is in heaven.
After this, you pray for your needs – not your wants, your needs.
Your daily bread. Then you admit to God that you are a sinner in
need of forgiveness, and you recognize that to be forgiven, you have
to forgive. It's a rule. You can't be forgiven if you haven't
forgiven. And finally you acknowledge your weakness and need for
God's protection --- lead us not into temptation, deliver us from
evil.
The second point Jesus makes is that
we have to persist. Abraham persisted, and God answered his prayer.
The man who persisted in banging on the door of his neighbor had his
prayer answered. But I know people who have prayed continuously and
not had their prayer answered. So what is going on here? What does
it mean to persist in prayer, what is Jesus telling us? I don't
think persistence means that we keep saying the same prayer over and
over. I think we can learn something from Abraham. He knew God as a
friend, and he knew that God had a weak spot, if you can call it
that – God loved the innocent. And Abraham presumed upon his
friendship with God to beg God to spare the whole city even for a
handful of innocent people. Abraham's prayer was not a plea for
himself, but for something God would want as well – sparing the
innocent and giving the wicked another chance.
The man who persuaded his neighbor to
get up and give him what he asked for knew something about his
neighbor; he was a friend; and ultimately would respond to a friend's
request. Persistence in prayer means not that we bother God to the
point of Him giving up, but we demonstrate to God that we really
believe in his power and his love for us, and we in turn trust that
he will answer our prayer.
The third point Jesus makes has to do
with the bread and stone, the fish and the scorpion. An earthly
father would never give his child a stone when he asked for bread –
of course not. But if the child asked for a stone, to eat or a
scorpion, a human father would not answer those requests either. But
a child who was refused these things could still trust in the
goodness and care of his father, who would still be giving him good
gifts. Jesus is not saying “sometimes the answer is no” but
rather, trust God to answer your prayer in the way that is best for
you. That's kind of where we started from – may your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
In the example Jesus gives us, you
notice that there is no “I”. The “Our Father” is a prayer of
a community. And it follows that if we want our prayers to be
answered, we need a community to pray with us. And it would be even
better if it were a community of individuals who were aware of the
gifts God has given each of them for the building up of the church.
Those are called “charisms”. I don't know why God did it that
way, but he works through us in our community. The Holy Spirit still
gives gifts of wisdom and knowledge and leadership and music and
intercessory prayer and even healing and prophecy. Saint Paul tells
us that. But we don't know which ones we have unless we work to
discern them – and after discerning them, step forward to use them.
The Church is the Body of Christ; we are an organism made up of many
parts. When we pray in Christ as a Body, won't God answer our
prayers?
There was a time when Christianity was
threatened by Islam, and the pope called for everyone to pray the
rosary. The Turks were turned back, miraculously. All the Church
prayed.
I know that my prayers have been
answered, sometimes in ways that I expected, but sometimes in ways
that were better than I expected. And you can't tell when God
answered your prayers or how he answered them unless you are looking
back at your life.
