17th Sunday

17th Sunday Ordinary
July 25, 2004

"But he still persisted: "Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time. What if there are at least ten there?" He replied, "For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it." (Genesis 18:20-32)
Ask and you shall receive... If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heavengive the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" (Luke 11 1-13)


Father Abraham "bargains" with the Most High to spare the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, gradually getting God to agree to do so if only for the sake of ten good people. The Patriarch's prayer is a conversation with an intimate friend. In his day it would have been unheard of to imagine that someone could have this kind of easy conversation with God. The gods of his day were meant to inspire submission, fear and awe. Abraham is polite, respectful and persistent, as if speaking with a kindly Father.


Jesus, in response to a request from a disciple, teaches us how to pray. First, he gives us the "Our Father", which most of us memorized as children, the prayer which is imprinted on our hearts even if we often fail to pay attention to what the words mean. He then gives an example from everyday life about the importance of persistence in prayer, comparing it to someone who gets what they need by being a pain in the neck. He compares our relationship with the Father to a parent who cannot resist a child's request for food.


Prayer is a conversation with the Most High. It is most efficacious when done in the spirit of an intimate relationship where no request is "too much". We also know that often our prayers seem to go unanswered, especially when we ask for specifics. Note in the gospel that Jesus promises that our Father in heaven will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. We are not promised that every whim, even every heartfelt desire, will be answered with some miraculous cure or transformation. The Spirit taught me this lesson early in my disease. When I pray for a cure it creates anxiety; when I simply converse with the Holy Spirit with an attitude of awe and gratitude I am almost immediately at peace.


We are promised that the Holy Spirit of the Father will be with us consistently through whatever pain or difficulty life presents us. This is the prayer that never goes unanswered, the heartfelt desire for and awareness of the compassionate, nurturing presence of God. The purest prayer is the one which asks to be conformed to the image of God, regardless of what life dishes out in spite of all our best efforts to make things come out right. We are taught many places in our tradition that this prayer itself is a gift from God. We are not praying to change the mind of the Most High about anything. We are praying to be reminded of that presence which in truth never goes away.


Loris Buccola