Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
July 23, 2016 4:30 pm · Father Dan Vanyo
We hear the familiar first reading of Abraham's persistence. Persistence. We hear it again in the Gospel, persistence in prayer. Perseverance if you prefer. But no matter whether you are getting something out of your prayer, whether you feel like it or not on a given day, whether you are tired, falling asleep, whatever, that you do your daily prayer. Why? Because it's that important. Now there's a lot of reasons to pray, I am going to focus on one today. And that is,to pray because souls need your prayer, so as an intercessor. Looking at Abraham, he is interceding for the people who really need it, the people he has no particular reason to like. His cousin is there, Lot. And yes he is on his mind, but he doesn't just try to get Lot out of it. He says if there is 50 people, 40 people.
The prophets, among other things, have something in common, and the Lord is very please with them. If you look at the different stories of the prophets in scripture, the Lord want to see them pray for the people and He is pleased when they do so. He is a little disappointed, well he is more than a little disappointed, when they don't. He expects it, and He expects it from us, because souls are at stake. And in this very interesting situation that we have, where we're in community, individuals in community as there will be individuals in the communion of saints in Heaven, we are here together. No one is supposed to be an island. Yeah we upset each other, not everyone gets along, and that's OK. But we're still supposed to pray for each other because souls benefit from other people's prayer. Isn't that an amazing setup?
