Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
July 24, 2022 11:00 am · Sergio Muñoz Fita
One of the Fathers of the Latin Church, Tertullian, has coined a statement about prayer that has always impressed me and that in some way reflects the teaching of this Sunday's readings. Tertullian said: "prayer is the omnipotence of man and the weakness of God".
Christian prayer can do everything, because we unite ourselves to Jesus and ask in him. The Lord himself says in the Gospel of St. John: "whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you" (Jn 15:16). Today we have heard the Lord say, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." Do we really have this great confidence in the power of prayer?
Look carefully: today the Lord taught us three things about prayer. First of all, he taught us what we should ask for. The Our Father contains everything that we can ask of the Father. In addition, Jesus told us to ask for the Holy Spirit, which is the Gift that contains all the gifts of God. Secondly, with the parable of the persistent friend, he encouraged us not to give up in prayer. God sometimes delays in giving us what we ask for so that we may deserve more and so that our desire and our capacity to receive his gifts may increase. Thirdly, he exhorted us to trust, for if we knock at the door, it is certain that sooner or later he will open it for us.
When I was a child, we were taught in the Catechism the qualities of a good prayer. There were four words: we were told to pray "with attention, humility, trust and perseverance". Today's first reading, with the example of Abraham's intercession for Sodom, and the Holy Gospel, with the parable of the persistent friend, dwell especially on the last characteristic: perseverance. How much perseverance costs us! Sometimes, we begin prayer commitments that we give up when we are tired or discouraged.
As I said at the beginning, let us see our prayer as a personal encounter with Jesus who is waiting for me. A "friendship with the One we know loves us" as St. Teresa used to say. If we do so, everything will change. In the Lord we will find rest for our souls and also effectiveness in our prayer.
Allow me to conclude with some words of Pope Benedict XVI in which he commented on today's First Reading. I recommend to you his entire catechesis, which is simply brilliant, but here I would like to take up his concluding words, which are impressive, and with which I too would like to conclude my ministry at St. Anne.
This is what the Holy Father said:
“With his entreaty, Abraham is lending his voice and also his heart, to the divine will. God’s desire is for mercy and love as well as his wish to save; and this desire of God found in Abraham and in his prayer the possibility of being revealed concretely in human history, in order to be present wherever there is a need for grace. By voicing this prayer, Abraham was giving a voice to what God wanted, which was not to destroy Sodom but to save it, to give life to the converted sinner (...).
Yet God’s mercy in the history of his people extends further. If in order to save Sodom ten righteous people were necessary, the Prophet Jeremiah was to say, on behalf of the Almighty, that only one upright person was necessary to save Jerusalem: “Roam the streets of Jerusalem, look about and observe, search through her squares, to find even one who acts justly and seeks honesty, and I will pardon her!” (5:1) The number dwindled further, God’s goodness proved even greater. Nonetheless this did not yet suffice, the superabundant mercy of God did not find the response of goodness that he sought, and under the siege of the enemy Jerusalem fell.
It was to be necessary for God himself to become that one righteous person. And this is the mystery of the Incarnation: to guarantee a just person he himself becomes man. There will always be one righteous person because it is He. However, God himself must become that just man. The infinite and surprising divine love was to be fully manifest when the Son of God was to become man, the definitive Righteous One, the perfect Innocent who would bring salvation to the whole world by dying on the Cross, forgiving and interceding for those who “know not what they do”. (Lk 23:34) Therefore, the prayer of each one will find its answer, therefore our every intercession will be fully heard.
Dear brothers and sisters, the prayer of intercession of Abraham, our father in the faith, teaches us to open our hearts ever wider to God’s superabundant mercy so that in daily prayer we may know how to desire the salvation of humanity and ask for it with perseverance and with trust in the Lord who is great in love.”
