July 26, 1998 |
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17th Sunday in Ordinary Time Luke 11:1-13 |
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| Background: Today’s reading contains Luke’s version of Jesus’ teaching on prayer. After Jesus himself has prayed, he teaches his disciples about prayer. The shorter Our Father, coupled with the example of the persistent friend and the example of what a human parent will give to a child demonstrate how God will listen and respond to our prayers. The response might surprise us by not being what we had expected. Still God does listen. In reflecting on this passage, Jack Shea observes that God doesn’t give little red wagons. Jesus promises that God will give Spirit. Perhaps it is this Spirit that allows us to not lose faith when our specific requests are not met. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a
time, not too many years ago, a young man in his early forties consumed by the last stages
of cancer that had spread to his liver, lay dying. His wife, and two young teenage sons
along with his parents who had come from Ireland and siblings from England and Ireland
along with an American shirt tail relation were at his bedside, reciting the rosary
prayers over and over. Now, for over three years these same people and many others had
stormed the heavens praying that he would beat the cancer. Though it seemed that those
prayers had been in vain, they still had not given up on prayer. When he slipped away
quite peacefully his mother observed, "Sure now didn’t we pray him into heaven
and wasn’t it a good thing for us to be here and see him going home? Now He’s
going to have to help us make it through life without John. And John himself will have to
intervene for us." |
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