Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

Why Does God Keep Silent?

It is rare that a Sunday Gospel reading naturally follows as a sequel to a previous Sunday Gospel reading. But that is what we have today. Our present Gospel reading is a natural follow up of last Sunday's Gospel reading.

Of course, a connection, even a logical connection, can always be made between Sunday Gospel readings. But it is rare that the connection follows naturally.

In last Sunday's Gospel we learned why Jesus went to a lonely place in order to pray. The basic reason was because he prayed aloud, not silently, as most of us are wont to do and he did not want to disturb others in their sleep and he also did not want to be disturbed during his prayer.

We also learned that that is how Jesus wants us to pray, aloud. He said to his disciples, "When you pray, say", that is, speak out.

A question that some of us may be thinking is: If we pray aloud, will we hear the reply of God? Or to put this question in another way: When we pray aloud why do we not hear the reply of God?

Most of us do not experience an audible reply from God. We do not usually hear with our ears God's reply.

Of course, there have been cases where God's reply is physically heard. Take the case of Moses. The Bible tells us that he spoke with God as a friend would talk to another, face to face (Exodus 33:11).

There have been saints who experienced what theologians call "locutions". These are verbal communications from God, sometimes audibly heard by the human ears, at other times heard spiritually, as was the case with St. Teresa of Avila.

But most of us do not experience locutions. Most of us do not hear a reply from God. And this is where our Gospel reading today helps us to understand how God replies to our prayer.

We are told in our Gospel reading that when the  Canaanite woman prayed to Jesus to help her about her daughter who was tormented by a demon, Jesus did not give any reply. Even when this woman was insistent to be heard by Jesus he still did not give any reply. It was the disciples who came to the rescue of the woman. They wanted Jesus to send her away because she was pestering them with her request. It was only then that Jesus made a reply, a reply that was a virtual denial of her request. In essence Jesus said that he had nothing to do with non-Israelites, like this Canaanite woman.

It was possible that Jesus kept his silence for more than 10 minutes, because this occasioned the irritation of his disciples. If it was less than 10 minutes the disciples would not have bothered about it. A ten-minute is a long time of silence.

In our experience God may be perceived by us as silent for more than 10 minutes. A husband prays for his wife who is sick with cancer. He prays for days, for weeks, for months and even years. And still he does not hear God's reply. God is silent for a long time.

An unemployed single mother of two little children desperately prays for a job that can give food to her children and herself. She prays for what she feels is a very long time and no such job is forthcoming. God is silent to her desperate prayers.

Our Gospel reading tells us why Jesus maintained his silence as a response to the request of the woman with a daughter tormented by a demon. He wanted to give that woman an opportunity to express and increase her faith. And he was right, for he heard the expression of that woman's faith and admired it for its greatness. He acknowledged that this woman had great faith. He said, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish."

The silence of Jesus evoked the great faith of this woman.

And that is the purpose of Jesus when he seems not to reply to our prayer, when he is silent about our request. He wants us to build up our faith. This was true when he was still physically present in our world. This is still true now that his presence with us is no longer in a physical manner but only sacramentally and spiritually. He wants to strengthen our faith by his silence.

The first reading tells us that God will bring to his holy mountain the foreigners, the non-Israelites who believe in him. He will make them pray in his house because this house is "a house of prayer for all peoples." There God will reply to their prayers as he builds up their faith.

In the second reading Paul the Apostle tells us that the Gentiles or non-Israelites are now accepted by God. They can now pray to God and God will give a reply.

This reply of God has been made in a person. Our Catechism says that God has said everything in his Word, that is, in Jesus. He has spoken to us by his Son. "In him (Jesus)  he (God) has said everything; there will be no other word than this one." Then it gets this idea from St. John of the Cross: "In giving us his son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word - and he has no more to say . . . because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All who is his Son." (65).

God has replied to all our prayers in Jesus. He can remain silent now because he has already given his reply and this reply is for the Jews and for the non-Jews like ourselves.

Jesus told us to pray aloud. We listen to God's reply. This reply is given in Jesus and through Jesus. And Jesus' reply is to build up our faith so that it will be done for us as we wish, just as it was done for the Canaanite woman as she wished.

Why does God keep silent when we pray to him? Because he has already given his reply in Jesus, through Jesus. We need only to look at Jesus and we will know the answer to our prayer. His Spirit bears witness with our spirit what this answer is. If we are attentive we hear his reply in the silence of our heart.

Let the man with a wife stricken with cancer look to Jesus. There a reply has been given to him. Let the single mother look to Jesus. Jesus' Spirit will lead that woman to the job she desperately needs to feed her two young children and herself. As the song goes, God will make a way when it seems there is no way. Jesus builds up our faith. And with this faith all things are possible for us.

Let us pray as we bow our heads. Lord Jesus, usually we do not hear God's reply to our prayers. Make us realize that God has already replied to our prayers in you and through you. Thank you for replying to our prayers by building up our faith. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

Why We Need to Pray Aloud

We now return to the Sundays of the year in ordinary time after the feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord last Sunday. This will continue without any interruption of any feast until the last Sunday of the year, which is the feast of Christ the King. That will end the Church's liturgical year. Then we enter into another year with Advent.

I had often asked myself why is it that Jesus had to go out alone to a lonely place in order to pray. For example, in the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 1 verse 35 we read that Jesus rose early in the morning and went off to a lonely place in order to pray. Luke 5:16 tells us that Jesus "often retired to deserted places and prayed". It appears that that was the habit of Jesus, to pray in a lonely, isolated place. He himself advised us when we want to pray to go to our room, close the door and pray to our Father in private, in Matthew 6:6. But we have no record of Jesus doing this himself. Instead he would leave the house or a crowded place and go to an isolated, lonely place to pray.

So, I asked: Why did Jesus have to go to a lonely, isolated place in order to pray? Could he not just go to a corner in the house and there put himself in a position of prayer so that the others in the house would not disturb him?

I asked this question because I myself would do this. I would go to a private area of the house and there do my prayer. I would go to a church where there were so many people and there I would pray. Until I seriously thought about this matter of Jesus' going to a lonely place to pray I did not go to a lonely place in order to pray. I prayed in my room or in the church or in a classroom.

The Gospel reading today may give us an answer to my question about Jesus' going to a lonely place in order to pray. Matthew's record of how Jesus prayed highlights a detail that is not found in the other Gospels. Mark's record says that Jesus went to the mountain to pray but he did not write that Jesus was alone. John's record says that Jesus went up to the mountain alone, but he did not write that Jesus prayed there. This detail is not recorded by Luke. But Matthew highlights this detail. The reading says, "After doing so, he (Jesus) went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone." Matthew makes it very clear that Jesus went to that mountain by himself alone to pray.

Again we have a specific case where it is stated that Jesus went to a lonely, isolated place to pray.

Notice, we do not say that Jesus always did this. Luke says that Jesus did this often but not always. Jesus prayed in crowded places. He prayed in the room where he held his last supper. He prayed on the cross before a multitude. But his favorite place for payer was a lonely, isolated place either on a desert plain or on a mountain.

If we say we follow Jesus we follow him to the mountain to pray. But we have also to know the reason why Jesus did this. For him there must have been a great advantage in praying in a lonely, isolated place. If we know this advantage we too will follow him to pray in a lonely, isolated place.

The reason for this is found in the introduction to the prayer which we pray most often, The Our Father. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus replied: "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name." (Luke 11:2). Jesus did not say, When you pray, think. He said, Say. That is, we have to speak out our prayer.

This tells us that when Jesus prayed he did not do what we usually do. We pick out a prayer book and read a prayer with our lips silently. Or we meditate on some teachings and apply this to our life. We get out beads and pray our Rosary but if we are alone we pray in silence, our lips moving without any sound. Jesus did none of these.

When Jesus prayed he spoke out loud words. In fact the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus prayed with loud cries to God (5:7). That was the reason why the writers of the Gospel were able to record the prayers of Jesus because they were spoken out loud. The whole chapter 17 of John's Gospel is a prayer of Jesus. John was able to write this because he heard Jesus speaking out loud this prayer. This was also the case with his prayer in the garden of Gethsemani. We know what he prayed there and how many times he prayed that prayer because his prayer was audible to others.

So now we know some of the reasons why Jesus went to a lonely, isolated place in order to pray.

First, he did not want to disturb others with his prayers because his prayers were with loud words. So while others were asleep he would leave the house and go to a lonely place where no one was there so he could pray aloud.

Secondly, he did not also want to be disturbed in his prayers. He was concentrated in what he was praying about and did not want others to disturb him.

Thirdly, and perhaps this is a more important reason than the first two reasons: When he was alone with his Father he was able to feel more the warmth and love of his Father. There was closer bonding, as we would say now.

Matthew Henry, the famous Bible commentator, wrote, "Those are not Christ's followers who cannot enjoy being alone with God and their own hearts." In other words if we do not enjoy talking alone with the Father of Jesus Christ we really do not belong to Christ, we are not real Christians.

This manner of praying is illustrated by our First Reading. There we heard that God was in the mountain, but he was not in the strong and heavy wind, not in the crushing rocks, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in a tiny whispering sound. This tells us we have to sound off our prayer, even if it is just a whisper.  God wants to hear the sound of our lips, even if it is just a whisper.

And what do we talk about with God? What should be the subject of our prayer? Many of us think that our prayer should be about our needs. Yes, but not primarily about our needs. The Second Reading tells us something different. The things that God is most interested in hearing from us are about his works, his people, the Israelites; their adoption by God, the glory God gave them, their covenant with God, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises he made; their patriarchs, and especially about Christ his son. These are the things God wants to converse about with us.

Prayer is a conversation with God. And we can only converse with God if we speak out our words aloud.

I had no desire to go to a mountain area in order to pray. But God gave me a job where I had to travel to a mountain area by myself. There I was able to see trees as tall as fifty meters and as large as ten feet in diameter. I could see no human being there, only the birds and the lizards and their companions. It was there I understood that God brought me there to speak with me. God still communicates with us on the mountain as he did with Moses and his son Jesus.

Let us bow down our heads in prayer.

Lord Jesus, you often prayed alone in the mountain. There you had sweet conversations with your Father who is also our Father. Lead us to pray as you prayed so that we become like you, obedient children of our heavenly Father. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

The Final Step

The readings today focus on a trait that Jesus wants us to have when we are praying for something. This trait is persistence or perseverance. He wants us to continue praying until we get what we are asking for.

In the first reading we have the case of Moses who persisted in having his hands outstretched in prayer to God while Joshua fought against the descendants of Amalek, the grandson of Esau who was the twin brother of Jacob or Israel. When Moses got tired and lowered his hands the Amalekites won the battle, but when Moses persisted in raising his hands with the help of Aaron and his sons, Joshua won the battle.

In the second reading we heard St. Paul telling Timothy and us to "proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching."

And in the Gospel we have St. Luke telling us that Jesus told a parable to his listeners "about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary".

Three readings about the value of persistence or perseverance. Jesus said elsewhere, "The man who holds out to the end, however, is the one who will see salvation" (Matthew 24:13). Holding out to the end is essential in our Christian life.

Some of you have heard about the persistence of the inventor Thomas Alva Edison in trying to produce the incandescent lamp. He tried more than a thousand ways to produce this electric lamp. Some have estimated between 5 thousand and 10 thousand attempts. There is a record that Edison's lamp factory conducted 2,774 experiments to produce this light bulb.

What almost all of us have not heard is about the number of times Edison experimented to produce the alkaline battery, the battery we use in our flashlights and watches and computers and cell phones. This involved more than 10,000 experiments. There is a story that a fellow sympathized with him for not being able to produce the battery that he desired and said something like, 'Isn't it a waste of time doing all those experiments without producing any result?' Edison is said to have immediately answered with a smile, 'Results! Why man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won't work!'

Such was the persistence of this famous inventor who openly acknowledged that he did not believe in the God of the theologians. If such a person who was considered by many as not Christian could be so persistent, how much more we who claim and profess that we are God's children and brother of Jesus the Son of God?

If there is one person who is perfectly persistent in his prayers for us, it is Jesus. Scriptures say that day and night he offered prayers to God for us. The writer to the Hebrews says, "In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God, who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence (5:7). And now he intercedes for us day and night before his Father God. In the Christian Prayer which some of us use we join Jesus in his interceding for the whole of humanity and creation.

We know from the Gospels that Jesus spent whole nights in prayer. That is how persistent he was in prayer. We read in St. Luke's Gospel, "Then he (Jesus) went out to the mountain to pray spending the night in communion with God." (6:12).

And if there is a person who desires most to end the poverty, violence, corruption, dehumanization around us, it is Jesus. His main method of implementing this desire that he has is prayer, persistent prayer to his heavenly Father. This is what he tells us in the parable we heard from the Gospel today. The persistent prayer of the widow changed the mind of the corrupt judge. Our persistent prayer will hasten our integral liberation, not only liberation from sin and its root, but also from its fruits, the poverty and violence we see around us today. That is why Jesus caused the Book of Revelation to be written by his Spirit through John so that he and his whole church prepare for and hasten this day when "He (God) shall wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the former world has passed away" (21:4).

In the end the final step of God is to vindicate us his saints, just like the unjust judge who vindicated the widow in the Gospel we heard today. And our final step is to persist, persevere in prayer. As the bookmark of St. Teresa of Jesus reads, "Patience wins all things."

Let us pray bowing our heads. Lord Jesus, you and your Church today remind us to persist in prayer. Give us the grace of persevering in prayer so that we hasten the day when poverty and violence will be completely banished from our minds and from our midst. In your gracious name we pray. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

 

Second Sunday of Lent Cycle C

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

Why Pray on a Mountain?

Most of us have not asked this question: Why did Jesus pray on a mountain? We have not asked because perhaps we did not notice this detail when reading or listening to the Gospel. But this detail is there for all of us to read and ponder upon.

In today's Gospel reading we heard, "Jesus took Peter, John and James and went up the mountain to pray." This was not the only time that Jesus prayed on a mountain. It is related by Luke that just before Jesus chose his twelve apostles "he went out to the mountain to pray, spending the night in communion with God" (Luke 6:12). And we are familiar with the fact that Jesus had the habit of praying at night in the Garden of Gethsemani which is on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. This Mount of Olives was a favorite of Jesus. It was here that he wept over Jerusalem because it did not believe in him. It was on this mount that he ascended to heaven. It is on this mount that he will descend when he comes again in bodily form. Jesus loved mountains and he loved to pray on a mountain. Why? We will find out why as we ponder on this sentence from our Gospel reading today.

We recall that in John's Gospel after Jesus fed a crowd of five thousand men (again John explicitly mentions on a mountain) he "realized that they would come and carry him off to make him king, so he fled back to the mountain alone" (6:15).

This was the first and most obvious reason why Jesus prayed on a mountain. He wanted to be alone when he prayed. It was to the mountain that he fled from the people. The Gospel says that he brought along with him Peter, James and John but he did not involve them in his prayer. He prayed alone while the three watched him. It was perhaps to ensure that nobody would disturb him that he brought these three disciples along. They were to guard him so that he would not be disturbed by others when he prayed.

Because Jesus was undisturbed on a mountain he could pray for any length of time before daybreak. This was the second reason. It was to pray for a long period of time that he prayed on a mountain. The time was so long that invariably the disciples would fall asleep as Jesus prayed. Jesus never hurried up in his prayers. He took his time. He was so unlike most of us who wish that a person praying in public would cut his prayer short so that we can go to the main show, as they say.

Some of us may ask this question: Jesus as second person of God was always united to God, was always in fellowship with his Father God. Why then did he go up the mountain to pray to his Father? Could he not pray to God in the plain, in the house where he stayed, in the street when they were walking?

Jesus did pray in the plain, he did pray in a room, he prayed even as he walked but still he wanted to pray on a mountain. Why? The third reason why he did this was to show us an example, to lead us in our prayer.

A mountain is higher than the plain. This is obvious. It is not obvious for us though that prayer should be the priority in all our activities. For most of us it is a decoration in our activities, especially during meetings and seminars. Prayer is like a parenthesis in our life. We pause for a short time in the morning to pray. We pause during meal time to pray. We pause before sleeping to pray. Many of us do not even pause. We just go ahead with our work.

For Jesus prayer was on the top of the mountain. It was on top of his activities. It was his priority. Nothing was to substitute for it. He prayed on a mountain to show us that our prayer life should also be on top of all our activities.

But Jesus does not just show us that our prayer life should be our priority. He leads us to make real this priority in our life. He sent his Spirit to move our hearts and minds to make prayer our number one priority in life.

Now you object. You say, "It was alright for Jesus to make prayer his priority because he had no other work but to preach. But for us this cannot be done because we have work in order to make a living. We have a family to feed, unlike Jesus."

This is where it shows that we have forgotten that we are baptized persons. According to our Catechism of the Catholic Church, numbers 1243, 1265, 1269, we who were baptized have put on Christ, have risen with Christ, are truly children of God because we are partakers of his divine nature, we no  longer belong to ourselves but to him who died and rose for us. We can no longer give the excuse that we are just mere human beings. By the grace of baptism we have become divine like Jesus.

Yes, we have work to do, to feed our family. And we do not abandon this work, because as Paul the Apostle says, If one does not work, let him not eat. But our priority is not our family but God's family. Before talking to the members of our human family we talk to our Father God. He knows what we need. Jesus said that even before we ask anything from God he knows already what we need. After all it is God who ultimately provides the food on our table. We only follow his instruction how to get it for our human family.

This life of Jesus within us, given to us at baptism, if it is real, if it is actualized will move us to make prayer our priority. In what ways? The Spirit of Jesus will lead us. We only follow.

In my case he has led me to pray first before I do any work. Not just pray some our fathers and hail marys but really pray with our Father God, commune with him. He does this in my life, not I doing it for him. When he speaks I pay attention.

Why did Jesus pray on a mountain? To be alone with his and our Father God, to be undisturbed and to show us that prayer is his and our priority.

Let us bow down our heads to pray.

Lord, teach us and lead us to make prayer, real prayer, conversing with our heavenly Father, our priority. Amen.