Homily—17^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

—Fr. Timothy W. Castor

"Lord, teach us to pray."

This is the request of the Disciples in today’s Gospel. And, through the sacred liturgy, Holy Mother Church places upon our lips this same request: "Lord, teach us to pray." It’s a request we make willingly, however, because so few of us have mastered the art of prayer; so few of us can be called people of prayer. Yet we know that to advance in the Christian life, we must pray, and we must pray well.

So, what do we learn from the Gospel? How does our Lord respond to this simple, yet profound and utterly essential request? He answers his Disciples in two ways. First, he teaches them what they should pray for: the content of prayer. Second, he teaches how they should pray: the attitude or spirit of prayer. Let’s look at both of these.

You’ll immediately notice that the first part of Jesus’ response is actually a shorter version of the Our Father—the Lord’s Prayer. The longer version—the one we all memorize and use (hopefully) every day of our lives—is found in Saint Matthew’s Gospel within the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Here, in Saint Luke, our Lord takes four of the seven petitions to teach his disciples how to pray—to give them a model or pattern of prayer. This is important to remember because, while it is certainly good to repeat these words as Jesus gave them to us, we should never let our prayer become thoughtless and mechanical: mere repetition of formulas which have lost their meaning for us. Rather, when we say the Our Father, we should say it as if we mean it and we should let it inform and guide all our prayer. So let’s look at these four petitions:

"Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come." From this we learn that when we approach God in prayer, we do so as devoted children coming to speak with a loving Father; and that, even before we mention a single personal request, our first concern is with the honor and glory of God and that His reign of love and peace extend throughout all the world and all of time.

The first personal request we make is "Give us each day our daily bread," and here we show our complete dependence upon God’s providence for the most basic needs of human life: our daily sustenance. But the Church has always understood this to mean, not only our physical needs, but our spiritual needs as well, and that "daily bread" refers primarily to the Bread of Life—the Body of Christ—given to us in the Holy Eucharist. And, if we avail ourselves of it, we do indeed have the privilege of receiving this wonderful food every day.

The next petition is, "forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us." Here we ask for forgiveness—another basic spiritual need—but only to the degree we have shown forgiveness. Not because God’s mercy is conditional, but as a reminder to us that we have no right to expect God’s forgiveness if we have refused to forgive others.

The last petition, "and do not subject us to the final test," is more commonly translated, "and lead us not into temptation." The Greek word rendered "test" or "temptation" is also used by Saint Luke in the fourth chapter of his Gospel to signify Satan’s temptations of our Lord after he was led by the Spirit into the desert. Here, Jesus seems to be saying, "Pray that God will never allow you to endure the kind of temptation I had to suffer; but if he does, he will always supply you with the grace you need to conquer the devil just as I did."

Before we leave our Lord’s teaching on what we should pray for, notice what all three personal petitions have in common: they are phrased in the first person plural: "Give us each day our daily bread," "forgive us our sins," "do not subject us to the final test." In other words, I do not pray for myself alone, but for all my brothers and sisters in Christ. The relationship we have with God is not "Jesus and me", but "Jesus and we"—Christ is the Head and we are all members of his Body. Therefore, our prayer must be communal in nature, expressing the needs of all, not just my own selfish desires.

The rest of today’s Gospel is a lesson in how we should pray—our attitude in prayer. And that attitude has two characteristics: it is an attitude of persistence and it is an attitude of filial trust—the kind of trust a small child has in its daddy.

To drive home the point about persistence, our Lord gives a little parable about a man who needs to borrow some bread from his neighbor. The neighbor gives an unbelievably lame excuse for why he can’t help: "Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything." But in the end he does help simply because of the man’s persistence. The point is this: if persistence works with a stubborn, selfish human being, think how effective it will be with our heavenly Father, who never sleeps and who is always ready to hear his children when they pray. And how do we show persistence in prayer? By a willingness to put some effort into prayer. "ask and you will receive;" says our Lord, "seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." Notice how the level of effort increases from asking to seeking to knocking. This is real persistence.

In today’s first reading, Abraham showed a lot of persistence in asking the Lord to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but there was something he lacked, something which was only fully revealed in the coming of Christ: it was that attitude of filial trust. God is not just the fearful Creator and Master of the universe, distant and unapproachable. He is our loving Father, eager to give good things to his children. To make this point, Jesus gives some examples from human parenting: "What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?" We know better than to play cruel tricks on our children, giving them something harmful in place of something they need. How much more will our Father in heaven give us the good things we need. In fact, he will give us the best gift of all: his Holy Spirit.

"Lord, teach us to pray." There is much more we can learn about prayer—to become proficient in prayer is really the work of a lifetime. But the basic truths our Lord teaches us today are all we really need to know. May God help us to pray for what we truly need, with persistence and with childlike trust.

© 2004, The Rev. Timothy W. Castor

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