Homily for the
17th Sunday of Ordinary Time
July 24, 2022
Luke 11: 1-13
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
“Lord,
on the day I called for help, you answered me” (cf. Ps 138: 3).
The 1st reading (Gen 18: 20-32) is the immediate sequence to last week’s 1st reading—the only time in the Sunday lectionary when we get such a sequence on consecutive Sundays. Today’s passage concerns Abraham’s pleading with the Lord, one of the guests whom he’s entertained with a meal and conversation. The conversation with the Lord reported today is a prayer on Abraham’s part, an extended dialog with God, in the form of bargaining like someone in the village market haggling about the price of a goat or a bolt of cloth. What Abraham aims to purchase is the life of his nephew Lot, who lives in Sodom. And the Lord hears Abraham’s prayer.
That
leads us to the psalm response: “Lord,
on the day I called for help, you answered me.”
Ps 138 is a prayer of thanksgiving to God for deliverance from enemies
and for other blessings, including the possibility of worshiping the Lord in
the temple in Jerusalem.
When we pray, we’re often asking the Lord’s help in some fashion. We need an abundance of his help in numerous aspects of our lives. This psalm prayer, Ps 138, like our Eucharist, is thanksgiving for the help the Lord has already provided. The psalm begins, “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart.” That’s what we do at Mass, thanking God for the great gift of Jesus Christ: for the deliverance he has won for us from our sins and from eternal death. In the Eucharist Christ is personally present to us not only with his body and blood, his soul and divinity, but also with his grace and power for us to have a right and holy relationship with his Father. In the Eucharist we pray that, persevering in grace, we may come to be counted among God’s saints, and we pray for the eternal life of all believers who’ve gone before us—indeed, we pray for the whole world. Baptism has made all of us a priestly people thru our relationship with Christ, and we exercise our Christian priesthood by interceding with Jesus’ Father for the salvation of the whole world.
The
psalm praises God for helping us on our day of need: “You have heard the words of my mouth. When I called you answered me. Your right hand saves me” (138:1,3,7). The psalm refers to our enemies. The original composer of the psalm probably
had in mind personal enemies, as David might have had Saul in mind when Saul
was seeking his life, or when David had to flee Jerusalem when Absalom rebelled
against him.
Certainly
it’s fitting for us to pray for deliverance from enemies or anyone who wishes
us harm, or from danger when we travel or from illness. We can pray very appropriately for others who
are oppressed unjustly, like the people of Ukraine and Hong Kong or villagers
in El Salvador terrorized by gangs.
More
important is to pray for deliverance from our ultimate enemy, the one who seeks
our eternal damnation. We pray with the
psalmist, “Against the anger of my enemies you raise your hand” (138:7). Christ has been raised from the dead to
overcome the hatred of Satan and all the demons of hell. Christ teaches us to pray, “Do not subject us
to the final test” (Luke 11:4) and to pray with persistence for the gift of the
Holy Spirit (11:8,13).
Every
schoolchild and a lot of college students dread “the final test”—even graduate
students facing a comprehensive exam or defending a dissertation. The followers of Jesus are tested every
day. Our sisters and brothers in China, Pakistan,
Nigeria, and other places live in constant danger of persecution: arrest, mob violence, kidnaping, etc. Their faith in Christ is constantly put to
the test. So is our faith,
specifically in adhering to the moral teachings of the Scriptures in the face
of relentless “progressive” policies on matters of human life and sexuality,
and in the face of “regressive” policies on migration and asylum, the climate
and the environment, and capital punishment.
(Last week Pope Francis reminded us that protecting God’s
creation is not optional for
Christians.) In
the Lord’s Prayer we pray that God’s kingdom come (Luke 11:2), that God be the
ruler of our lives. If we mean that,
we’ll stand up for what Christ and his Church teach us on such public policies,
regardless of opinion polls, the media, and our political leaders.
“Do
not subject us to the final test” might also take a more personal meaning. It may be something like what Jesus faced in
the Garden of Gethsemane, so afraid of his coming passion and death that he sweated
blood. Our own approaching death—we
always have to keep before our eyes the fact that we’re going to die and come
before Christ to give an account of our lives—the approach of death might fill
us with a dread like Jesus’. The thought
of judgment might tempt us to despair of our salvation—a “final test” thrown at
us by Satan. Do we really trust the
great mercy of God, mercy he readily bestows on repentant sinners? Jesus tells us to be persistent in begging
God for what we need (Luke 11:8)—and that’s forgiveness, mercy, salvation. He tells us to keep asking, keep seeking,
keep knocking at the Father’s door (11:9-10).
Our heavenly Father, he says, is far better than any earthly parent and
won’t hesitate to “give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (11:13)—the
Spirit who makes us holy temples of God, the Spirit who unites us firmly with
Jesus our Savior. Fortified by the
Spirit, we can face any assault, any trial, any test of Satan.
When
we’re tested, may God in his kindness and his truth deliver us; may his right
hand save us; may he complete his work of salvation in us (Ps 138:2,7-8).
No comments:
Post a Comment