Homily for the
16th Sunday of Ordinary
Time
July 19, 2020
Rom 8: 26-27
Holy Name of Jesus,
Valhalla, N.Y.
“The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom 8: 26).
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| Pentecost (Jan Joest) |
In the physical absence of Jesus, we can and
do still use his prayer. But often we
want more. We may be unsure of what to
pray for, or we may suffer interminable distractions, or we may want some new
formula that’s a little less rote, or we may want to be able to put more heart
into what we say to God. There are so
many ways in which we feel our prayer to be inadequate, so that “we do not know
how to pray as we ought.”
There’s an old Jewish story from Eastern
Europe that might encourage us:
When
the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it
was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a prayer,
and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.
Later,
when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same
reason, to say the prayer, he would go to the same place in the forest and
say: “Master of the Universe,
listen! I do not know how to light the
fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.”
And again, the miracle would be accomplished.
Still
later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would
go into the forest and say: “I do not
know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place, and
this must be sufficient.” Once again, a miracle.
Then
it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his
hands, he spoke to God: “I am unable to
light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in
the forest. All I can do is to tell the
story, and this must be sufficient.” And
it was sufficient.[1]
It’s a story of God’s sufficiency when our
own knowledge or resources are insufficient.
It’s a story of grace, if you will.
It’s a story of “the Spirit coming to the aid of our weakness.”
In the Our Father we pray that God’s will may
be done on earth as it is in heaven. But
we seldom know what his will is.
(Stephen Vincent Benet’s epic poem John
Brown’s Body has a magnificent scene in which Lincoln struggles to discern God’s
will amid the carnage of the Civil War.) Too often we try to get God to accommodate
himself to our will. Praying in the
Spirit would have us praying like Jesus in the Garden: “Not my will but yours be done” (Matt
26:39). We’d leave ourselves open to the
apparent frustration of our own hopes and desires.
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| St. Monica |
So our prayer, if it’s really prayer and not
just the projection of our own egos, has to rely upon the ultimate wisdom of
God, which is to say, on the Holy Spirit.
Such reliance is the best possible way of
praying. “The Spirit himself intercedes
with inexpressible groanings” (8:26).
What we don’t know how to pray for, or what we can’t find the right
words for, the Spirit knows and puts before the Father—no words necessary. The longing of our hearts, the Spirit carries
to the Father—whether our hearts are heavy or light, whether they are bursting
with praise or collapsed in anguish, whether we need forgiveness or guidance.
Of course we can use words too. In an old column in Catholic New York, Mary DeTurris Poust recounts how one afternoon
she “was complaining about some minor problem,” and Chiara, her younger daughter,
5 at the time, said, “Why don’t you just talk to God?” Chiara one day had overheard her “frazzled”
mom “talking out loud to God” and “picked up on the fact” that Mom often talks
to God “not in traditional prayer form but as if I am talking on the phone with
a friend—when I’m stressed.” Without
intending it, Mary had taught Chiara a wonderful way to pray—just talk to God
like he’s your “good friend, someone who will always listen.”[2]
Because God is our friend. Jesus assures us that we’re his friends, and
he’s given us his Spirit to reassure
us. Just a few verses before the passage
that’s our reading today, Paul tells the Christians of Rome that the gift of
the Holy Spirit enables them to address God as Abba because, in giving them Jesus’ Spirit, he has adopted them as
his own children (8:15). He’s Dad; Jesus
is friend and brother. If that weren’t
enuf for them to read our hearts, the Spirit takes care of whatever more’s
needed: “And the one who searches hearts
[the Father] knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because he [the Spirit]
intercedes for the holy ones [those made holy because he dwells in their
hearts] according to God’s will” (8:27).
The Spirit of Jesus, deep within us, makes our prayer to the Father,
uttering what we can’t because our human nature is too ignorant or too frail or
too distracted or too overwhelmed by our sins or not bold enuf to come to the
Father and demand his attention.
What is required of us for prayer is only 2
things: 1st, that we want to pray, that
we make the effort, that we put in the time, that we give God a piece of our
schedules; and 2d, that we really want to be open to him, to his will, to his
desire to make us holy and bring us into his
world—not the other way around. When
Paul speaks of “the intention of the Spirit” and of “how we ought to pray,”
he’s speaking in the context of our eternal destiny: “the glory to be revealed for us” (8:18),
“creation set free from slavery to corruption and sharing in the glorious
freedom of the children of God” (8:21), “the redemption of our bodies” (8:23),
our hope of salvation (8:24). The Spirit
of Jesus most gladly intercedes for us, adds his “inexpressible groanings” to the “groanings of creation in its
labor pains even until now” (8:22), that we might be saved despite all our
weakness.
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