The Gospel of today (Lk 11:1-13) teaches us to pray with confidence and perseverance. This week we have the opportunity to put this teaching into practice during Pope Francis' "Penitential pilgrimage". With him, we pray that this pilgrimage "will contribute to the journey of healing and reconciliation already undertaken".
Gn 18:20-32
Lk 11:1-13
One night, two young brothers were staying over at their grandmother’s house. It was just a week or so away from the younger brother’s birthday. As their grandmother was tucking the brothers in before bed, she reminded them to say their prayers. She then left the room to go next door, leaving the door ajar. The older brother said his prayers first, giving thanks to God for his family. Then the younger brother prayed. After he had thanked God as his older brother had, he suddenly raised his voice shouting, “And God, for my birthday next week, can you please get me a PlayStation 5!” The older brother then turned to the younger brother and said, “you don’t have to shout. God isn’t deaf.” To this, the younger brother responded, “I know, but grandma is”.
Like that younger brother, we too can struggle with prayer and how it works. The first reading and the Gospel point us in the right direction.
To start, we should acknowledge that prayer is difficult for all of us. I think we can all be embarrassed by our prayer life sometimes. We often assume that everyone else has an amazing prayer life. All others have to do, we might think, is close their eyes and they are immediately filled with the presence of God. This is not the case! We all struggle with prayer, myself included. When I pray, I seldom have incredible insights or experience strong positive emotions. I can easily lose concentration and become distracted. I received a good reality check about the difficulty of prayer when I read an interview with the now deceased Cardinal Hume. Towards the end of his life this devout man was asked about his prayer life. He responded:
Oh, I just keep plugging away. At its best it’s like being in a dark room with someone you love. You can’t see them, but you know they’re there.
In today’s Gospel, we find the disciples also struggling with pray. They ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. That the disciples and great Christians such as Cardinal Hume also struggled with knowing how to pray gives me hope. We all find prayer difficult.
A common struggle we all have in prayer has to do with that fact that the things we ask for often do not come to pass. This is a major tension in our prayer life. On the one hand, Jesus encourages us to trust that God is a loving Father who will always give us – his children – good things. This message comes across in the Gospel. After teaching his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus tells them to persevere in prayer, trusting that God the Father will give them what they need. On the other hand, we have all experienced that we sometimes do not receive what we ask for in prayer. This can be a very painful experience. We can feel that God is not listening, that our prayer is useless. How can we make sense of this tension in our prayer life? The prayer that Jesus taught us gives us a hint. In Luke’s Gospel – which we heard today – Jesus teaches us to prayer that “his [God’s] kingdom come”. In Matthew’s version of the prayer, he adds to this that we should ask God that “his will be done”. Although Jesus encourages us to ask God for what we need, he also wants us to know that we should desire that God’s will be done in our life. God always wants what is best for us. We ask for many things in prayer, but sometimes we struggle to know what is best for ourselves. Looking back, I recognize that there are some things that I asked God for in prayer that weren’t really what was best for me. I can see now that what actually happened to me at that moment, though not what I wanted at first, was actually what was best for me. Prayer always does something. The first thing prayer does is change our heart. When we pray God slowly changes our hearts so that we begin to desire what God desires for us. Even when our prayers seem to have no result, we should continue praying, trusting that God is changing us as well as our circumstances.
This week, we, together with Pope Francis and Catholics throughout Canada, have much to pray for. From July 24 – 29 Pope Francis will be visiting Canada on what he has called a “penitential pilgrimage”. The idea of pilgrimage expresses well the nature of prayer that we hear about in the readings today. A pilgrim is someone who perseveres in prayer, being authentic and even daring with God in prayer as Abraham was in the first reading. At his Angelus address on July 17, Pope Francis explained the nature of his visit:
Dear brothers and sisters of Canada, as you know, I will come among you especially in the name of Jesus to meet and embrace the indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, in Canada, many Christians, including some members of religious institutes, have contributed to the policies of cultural assimilation that, in the past, have severely harmed native communities in various ways. For this reason, I recently received some groups in the Vatican, representatives of indigenous peoples, to whom I expressed my sorrow and solidarity for the harm they have suffered. And now I am about to embark on a penitential pilgrimage, which I hope, with God's grace, will contribute to the journey of healing and reconciliation already undertaken.
