Category Archives: Prayer

Ask…Seek…Knock

08 Thursday Oct 2015

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October 8, 2015 – Thursday in the Eighteenth Week after Trinity

Readings: Malachi 3:13-4:2a; Luke 11:5-13

And I tell you, ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Luke 11:9, RSV-CE

Today’s Gospel reading must be read as a whole. Otherwise, “ask, and it will be given you” would be understood incorrectly. (For instance, I have asked for a Ferrari many times, but I still don’t have one.) In addition, if we do not read the entire passage we might think that if we persistently annoy God enough with our prayers then He will give us what we want, like the importunate friend in the Gospel.

On the other hand, persistence in prayer is necessary; not because our prayer changes God’s mind, but because it changes us. As St. John Vianney said, “Prayer is union with God.” However, our persistence must take the form of always seeking that which we truly need from God, with the understanding that all we need comes to us from Him. Far too often, though, we continue to ask for a stone, instead of the bread that God desires to give us. But, the more we become transformed into the image of Christ, the more natural it will become for us to ask for what is in accord with the will of God.

At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that God will give to us His Holy Spirit. And God gives us the Spirit because, as St. Paul tells us, “we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us” (Romans 8:26b) and “the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:27b)

So yes, ask and you will receive, but remember that you will receive based upon what you truly need, not what you think you need.

 

Prayer: Union with God

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Definitions, God's Will, Prayer

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Prayer is nothing else than union with God.

From A Catechism on Prayer, by St. John Mary Vianney

Before today, if someone had asked me “what is prayer” or “why is prayer important,” I would have had a difficult time answering the question. More than likely it would have taken a discussion of 5-10 minutes for me to explain what prayer is. And I suspect that many other people would have a difficult time explaining prayer because it is so mysterious. And yet in just a few words St. John Mary Vianney has given a perfect definition for what prayer is – union with God.

There are many different prayers the Church uses and many different types of prayer, but union with God is at the heart of them all. As an example let us consider the prayer that is most often used by people: petitionary prayer. People ask God for all sorts of things – everything from winning lottery numbers, to a favorite sports team winning the game, to curing a loved one of cancer. And then, when we don’t get what we want we so often say, “Why didn’t God give me what I asked for?!” Perhaps we do not receive what we desire because it was a foolish request, like winning the lottery. But ultimately there is a problem with petitionary prayer because people forget that God does not give us what we want; instead, He gives us what we need.

But this problem would never arise if people kept in mind that prayer is union with God. If in our prayer life we are seeking that union, then when we pray it will naturally be in tune with God’s will for us. There may still be times when we ask for something that is not beneficial for us and therefore God will not give it to us. But if we are always seeking union with God in our prayer, then we will more readily accept not receiving what we desired with the understanding that it was not what we needed. Our Lord teaches this to us with the following words:

For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

St. Matthew 7:8-11, RSV-CE

Too often, without knowing it, we ask for stones instead of bread! If only we would remember that the ultimate reason for prayer is union with God, then we would come to see that that which we receive, even if it is not what we asked for, is exactly what we needed all along.

 

God’s Will and Man’s Prayer

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in Definitions, Free Will, God's Will, Liturgy of the Hours, Prayer, Submission to God, The Fall

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The quote below is from the Office of Readings appointed for Friday, November 28, 2014. The first line and how he connects it to prayer is what really caught my attention.

Our obligation is to do God’s will, and not our own. We must remember this if the prayer that our Lord commanded us to say daily is to have any meaning on our lips. How unreasonable it is to pray that God’s will be done, and then not promptly obey it when he calls us from this world! Instead we struggle and resist like self-willed slaves and are brought into the Lord’s presence with sorrow and lamentation, not freely consenting to our departure, but constrained by necessity. And yet we expect to be rewarded with heavenly honours by him to whom we come against our will! Why then do we pray for the kingdom of heaven to come if this earthly bondage pleases us? What is the point of praying so often for its early arrival if we would rather serve the devil here than reign with Christ.

From the Treatise of St Cyprian on Mortality

Specifically, St. Cyprian is here referring to the Lord’s Prayer and the petition within it that states, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” He is trying to show how absurd it is to pray this prayer daily and yet to try to resist God who is constantly calling us to Himself. But this passage has much broader implications.

First of all, let us consider mankind’s obligation of doing God’s will and not our own. Let us go back to the beginning before Adam and Eve turned against God. At the moment of their creation Adam and Eve were absolutely perfect, they were in a state of Original Justice. The Catechism describes Original Justice in the following way:

As long as (mankind) remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation comprised the state called ‘original justice.’

CCC §376 (for more information see CCC §374-384)

In addition, in §377 it goes on to say that mankind’s mastery over the world was most importantly his mastery of self.

The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason.

In short, this means that man’s will was perfectly aligned to the will of God who had created him. This is how God had designed it to be and intended it to stay. But then, sin entered into God’s perfect creation through the disobedience of Adam and Eve. What the sin was does not matter as much as the fact that Adam and Eve, who had been made in God’s image, did sin. What this means is that instead of keeping their wills in alignment with the will of God, they choose to go their own way, trying to assert their own wills above the will of the One who had created them. They, being finite, were trying to tell the infinite where to get off, which is an absolute absurdity.

Now, how does this fit with our prayer to God? When considering our prayers, and that maybe we are not ‘getting what we ask for’, we must remember that prayer is not primarily about getting what we want. Perhaps this is the reason that people do not pray as they ought to, because they don’t see the results they want and, therefore, think that it doesn’t work. But we need to remember that prayer is not about imposing our will on God but about submitting our will to His. As St. James tells us, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly.” (James 4:3a, RSV-CE)

What it all really comes down to is this: for anything to work properly in our lives, whether it be prayer or anything else, then our lives must be properly ordered. And what is the proper order for our lives? It begins by realizing that our wills are subordinate to the will of God and then, through the grace of Christ, fulfilling our obligation to God by subordinating our wills to His.

Faith and Prayer

18 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in Faith, Prayer, Sermons

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Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity

17 August a.d. 2014

In order to better understand today’s Gospel reading, we must first see the context in which it is placed. Today’s Gospel is a contrast to what immediately precedes it in the fifteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. Starting in the first verse, we have the Pharisees coming to Jesus and questioning Him saying, “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” They came to Him with this question because they were trying to defend the Jewish religion. But, they had forgotten the most important point of being a Jew–the Jews were God’s Chosen People–the people who had received the promise of the coming Messiah. That is why Jesus comes right back at them by asking “why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” He is trying to bring into their minds what is truly important and it is this interaction with the Pharisees that sets the stage for Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel.

The Catechism tells us that “certain Gentiles…recognized in Jesus the fundamental attributes of the messianic ‘Son of David,’ promised by God to Israel.” (CCC §439 n.38) And the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel is one who is mentioned specifically in the Catechism. Even though it was the Jews, represented by the Pharisees in the first verse, who received the promise of the Messiah, they rejected Jesus. But, on the other hand, this Canaanite woman, a foreigner from a people who worshipped idols, recognized the Truth about who Jesus is, which is evidenced by the fact that she called Him “Lord, Son of David.” Referring to the title ‘Lord’ the Catechism states, “This title testifies to the respect and trust of those who approach (Jesus) for help and healing.” (CCC §448) And the title “Son of David” is a Messianic title. From this we see that the woman, even though she was not a Jew, understood who Jesus truly was better than the Jews themselves.

But since this woman understood who Jesus was, why did our Lord at first brush off her pleas for help by saying to His disciples, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”? And then, when she moved closer and knelt before Him, why did He utter the harsh words, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs”? There are at least two reasons that He did so.

The first reason that explains why Jesus was so harsh with the Canaanite woman is that it gave her an opportunity to demonstrate the magnitude of her faith. When Jesus left the Pharisees and entered into the district of Tyre and Sidon He already knew He would encounter this woman and what it is that she would say. But, if He had simply healed the woman’s daughter at her first request then she would not have had the opportunity to show her faith. Amongst many of His own people, Jesus did not find the faith that He was looking for and certainly this must have been disheartening to Him. Of this the Catechism states, “Jesus is as saddened by the ‘lack of faith’ of his own neighbors and the ‘little faith’ of his own disciples as he is struck with admiration at the great faith” of Gentiles such as the Roman centurion from the eighth chapter of St. Matthew and the Canaanite woman from today’s Gospel. (CCC §2610)

The second reason that our Lord is so harsh to the woman today is because the interaction He had with the woman gives us some very important lessons about prayer. If He had immediately granted her request we would not benefit from learning this lesson. The first thing we should notice is that in order to obtain from Christ what she wanted, she “came out” of her country. Remember that her country was full of idolatry and she had to turn her back on all of that in order to come to Jesus. In a similar manner, we too must turn our back on the world and its various idols of false desires when we come to Jesus in our prayer.

Next we are told “she came and knelt before him”, which is a sign that she was worshipping Him, with some translations even saying she worshipped Him. When we come to Jesus in prayer we must remember that He is God. After all, what would be the point in praying to Him if He was not God? And even though we may acknowledge His divinity with our minds, do our actions demonstrate our belief in Him as God? All too often we put ourselves as the center of our own little universe and relegate Christ to a periphery aspect of our lives. If we do this then why should He even acknowledge our prayers? Would He not rather ignore us as He first ignored the woman today? But she came to Him and knelt before Him showing that she, in fact, did recognize who He is and we must do the same in our own lives if our prayer to Him is to have any meaning whatsoever.

Lastly, the woman today shows us the importance of persistence in prayer. She cried out to Him once from a distance, then a second time she asked while kneeling before Him and a third time, even after being called a dog, she persisted. The number three is a number symbolic of perfection for Christians. For example, the Trinity of Persons within the Godhead is a sign of perfection for us. Therefore it is significant that the woman asks Jesus for help three times because this shows us she asked a perfect number of times: never giving up and never doubting­. And, it even suggests to us that the demonstration of her faith to our Lord was perfect. This of course is acknowledged by our Lord when He said to her, “O woman, great is your faith!”

It is this faith that our Lord desires to see within each and every one of us. It is too often that we give up in our prayers because we don’t readily receive that which we request from our Lord. And of course sometimes we do not receive because we are asking for that which would do us no good. But for the other times, when we are asking for something worthy, like the conversion of a family member, we can too easily give up when we don’t receive it immediately. When you are tempted to give up in your own prayers then you need to remember the woman today who did not give up, or call to mind saints like St. Monica, who had to pray for her son for almost two decades before he converted.

I think we need to view today’s Gospel as an example of what great faith can do. Jesus gave to the woman today an opportunity to demonstrate the greatness of her faith and I believe that He gives each one of us the same opportunity in our own lives. But, if we give up at the first indication of failure, then how can we ever come to have that same faith in our Lord. You see, faith is not just saying we believe in Jesus. It is a demonstration of our belief in Jesus. Jesus once posed the question, “when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (St. Luke 18:8) As followers of Christ, we should sincerely desire to demonstrate that faith He is looking for in our lives. And the Canaanite woman today gives us one of the best examples of how we can show Him our faith.