17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
Gen 18:20-32; Col 2:12-14; Lk 11:1013
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
25 Jul 2004
One of the most important reasons for the existence of the Catholic Church is to teach people to pray; to encourage them to come together each week in Eucharistic communities for the celebration of Sunday Mass and remind them of the obligation to pray personally and regularly.
Prayer is an obligation because God is important. He is our Father who loves us and we should acknowledge this and communicate with him in prayer. Therefore prayer is not just day dreaming, not just an exploration of our psyche, not just an interior journey into an abyss. In fact if we do try to pray regularly, especially with quiet prayer or meditation, we are likely to see our heart of hearts, our soul more accurately, but this is a by product of opening ourselves to God.
The gospel passage begins with Jesus’ followers asking him to teach them to pray, as John the Baptist had taught his disciples. Our Lord responded with most of what we now call the “Our Father,” although this Lucan version does not include the prayer that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Like the Ten Commandments the first two sections are God-centred, as we pray that God’s name will be held holy, reverenced and not blasphemed, while the second invocation is that God’s Kingdom might come, that goodness and faithfulness might prosper against the world of evil, lies and violence; what Pope John Paul II has called so accurately the culture of death.
Then we are told to pray for ourselves, for our daily needs, for forgiveness of our sins, that we will be able to forgive others and finally we pray that we will not be tested too severely; or as in the words the Our Father we pray that we may not be led into temptation.
Some superior people over the centuries have told us that we should not ask God for things; that this is immature and perhaps God is too busy with too many people to be listening. It is also true that if God granted some of our prayers it would be to the detriment of others.
I have always replied to that charge, by explaining that we are simply following Jesus’ instructions to pray for our daily bread for what we need.
We all know how irritating it is to have a child who is always asking for things. In the old unreconstructed world where I grew up, he was often told that if he kept that up he would receive a present he was not expecting!
There are two extremes to be avoided. If our only prayers to God are prayers of petition, then our faith is shallow and immature. Adults are able to say thanks as well as being grateful and we should thank God for his many blessings. We also need to pray for forgiveness and we should regularly praise God, rejoicing in his goodness and mercy.
There is also an opposite extreme I regularly explain to secondary students that if they never pray when they are in trouble, it probably means that their faith is non-existent for practical purposes. No one has ever come up later to contradict me on this point.
Today there are two interesting examples of believers making requests of God. In fact in the first reading we have Abraham bargaining with God not to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. God originally wanted fifty just men, but settled for ten. If there were ten just men the city would not be destroyed. Ten such men could not be found and the city was destroyed.
It is difficult, indeed impossible for us now nearly four thousand years later, to identify the core historical truths in this narrative, but it is clear evidence of the continuing Judaeo-Christian moral opposition to homosexual activity.
The second example follows on the Lord’s teaching of the Our Father, when he gives an irreverent, almost scandalous example to demonstrate that we should keep on praying even when our prayers are not answered. God, Jesus explained, is a bit like the head of a household in bed with his wife and children, the door barred and bolted, who will eventually answer his friend’s request for food, not out of good will, but simply to get rid of him, so that they will be left in peace!
Quite remarkably Jesus urges us to persist in our prayers, because “the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds”; the door will be opened to those knocking.
This contradicts much of our experience. Often our prayers do not seem to be answered, at least in our terms.
I used to do quite a bit of sports coaching and I was helping to prepare a Year 12 crew for a big race. I had celebrated Mass for the crew, when one of them, an Irish-Australian from a non-practising family, said to us that we should say a decade of the rosary together that we might win. (I have long felt that this was the religious peak or highlight of my coaching career). The inevitable happened and the crew did not win. He came to me in some perplexity afterwards pointing out that we had prayed but still lost!
I said that life was like that. God certainly heard our prayers; he answered them in some way, sometimes giving what we asked, but not always. In fact he is more likely to reward those with a strong faith and particularly listens to significant prayers e.g. we should always pray for our loved ones.
Jesus explained that God is like a good father who will not give us a snake instead of a fish, nor a scorpion instead of an egg. But he did not claim that God would give us what we seek, only that he would give us the Holy Spirit.
For most of the time, this is more than enough!
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
