Weekly Sunday Homilies

Fr. Joseph's Homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A)

Our words impact our prayers and our prayers impact our words:

 

Speak well that you might pray well, pray well that you might speak well. 

Why pray.....no really.....why pray at all? If you are not sure if your prayers are answered, or simply, if in faith we trust that God already knows what we are going to ask for before we ask it, why pray? 

When we are very little children, we cannot speak out loud.....we expect our parents to be able to figure out what we need and provide it to us, to work through our unsure and unclear desires and needs and give us what we need. But at some point, we become old enough to be able to speak and our whole worlds change. Suddenly we can name what we need or want (even if we don’t always know or are sure about what we need or want). And with that ability comes responsibilitytoo. The responsibility to learn how to name what we need! Crying and whining don’t work every time anymore, and we learn how to say what we are feeling, thinking and doing. 

If we are anxious we learn how to deal with it....but sometimes poorly and so Paul tells us our way to fight against anxiety of all kinds: When we name these things in prayer and asking of God we put them outside of ourselves what used to be bottling up inside of us. We turn to the Lord with frustration and confusion, tearsand irritation, we turn to him even when we feel we have been wronged and think we know how to solve it. 

There is a reason for voicing prayers to a God who already knows them: our prayer changes us and truly allows God to work upon us because we have said “YES” to Him. 

Prayer that surpasses all understanding but there is also prayer which is so poorly thought out that we don’t end up saying anything. Do the Hard work of prayer. 

The reward is above: Focus on positive 

Why pray at all? Because we are given authority to do so, authority which is the primary theme of the Gospel. 

Jesus is criticizing the religious leaders of his day who have taken their power to regulate religious life and have abused that authority by taking advantage of the people for personal gain and profit, and are spiritually abusing them through the legalistic system of the Temple where, instead of focusing on how sacrifices at the Temple redeem and purify us drawing us closer to God, had become obsessed with how impurity and behaviors that made people ritually unclean were, in some sense, more important to focus upon.

As the saying goes, absolute power makes for absolute corruption, but also with great power comes great responsibility to quote the proverb popularized by the Spiderman movies and comics.

When authority is used well it is open to accountability and criticism. This is why we have a pastoral council and town hall meetings, this is why on the Diocese of Little Rock website the main tabs across the top are: “Daily Readings” “Find a Parish” “Help Now” and “Report Abuse”. When we take seriously what it means to have authority, then we take seriously what it means for that to be misused and empower you to report any kind of abuse of any kind so that real justice and restoration can occur. 

The religious authorities of Jesus’ day, too obsessed with their own images and standings, would rather kill Jesus when he appeared to them, and John the Baptist too, than admit that what He was saying was deepening and perfecting the whole system they professed and believed. 

Just as voicing our prayers our loud changes us for the better, voicing what is true and needs to be said for the sake of justice, equally can change to world for the better and lead to what is good and true and beautiful. In a world and a political climate in which lying and slander are seen as virtues instead of the sins that they are, we are called to be people of truth here in our community and in the Church at large.

Practically speaking this means examining our own hearts for what we are holding back from God, and holding back from naming as true. Ask God this week for the gift of the Holy Spirit or Understanding and Fortitude. Ask for the gift to understand what it is we are to pray and what we are to speak, and the courage from the Lord, from on High, to do so.