Homily for 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 27, 2025
Luke 11: 1-13                                    
Villa Maria, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

The Lord's Prayer (James Tissot)

“One of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray’” (Luke 11: 1).

The gospels tell us often that Jesus prayed.  Today one of his disciples asks him to teach them how to pray.  We’re given 3 lessons.

The 1st and 3d lessons are what we are to pray for.  The 2d one is that we need to be persistent.  Our Old Testament reading (Gen 18: 20-32) also is an example of that.

St. Luke gives us a somewhat simpler version of what we often call the Lord’s Prayer, or more commonly, the Our Father.  We’re more familiar with St. Matthew’s version, which we find in the Sermon on the Mount (6:9-13).

1st, Jesus advises us to address God as our Father, as a loving parent, just as he prays to God his Father.  Then we pray that we and everyone will reverence God:  “hallowed be your name” (Luke 11:2); may your name be treated as sacred.  God’s name is holy; it represents God himself, like your name and my name standing for ourselves.  It’s disrespectful, therefore, to exclaim as so many people do, “O my God!” when they’re surprised or want to be emphatic.  No one invokes his mother’s name that way, nor should we invoke our Father’s.

We pray that God’s kingdom come, i.e., that God reign, that he rule our hearts and our actions.  How peaceful our neighborhoods and our world, even our families, would be if we truly tried to live the way God desires, the way that Jesus and his holy Mother model for us.  (She said, “Let it be done to me as you say” [Luke 1:38], and she lived her whole life that way.)

We pray for what we need to live.  “Bread” stands for everything.  Note that we pray in the plural, “Give us,” not “Give me.”  Everyone is a child of God, and everyone deserves God’s care:  Palestinians and Ukrainians, refugees and foreigners, the homeless, the sick, and even our enemies.

Yes, our enemies too.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commands us to love them and to pray for those who persecute us (Matt 5:43-44).  So here in the Lord’s Prayer, he links the forgiveness of sins that we all need with our willingness to forgive others.  We may struggle to do that—no one pretends it’s easy—but we must desire that and at least pray for whoever has harmed us.  Jesus did that, as you know, when he asked his Father for forgive those who crucified him (Luke 23:34).

Jesus concludes his prayer with a plea for deliverance from “the final test” (11:4).  Obviously, that’s not a student’s prayer.  The gospels were written in a time of persecution (“pray for those who persecute you”), and such a time persists somewhere in every age, even in our own time in many parts of the world, such as Nigeria, Nicaragua, and India.  In his autobiography, Pope Francis wrote, “Even in the twenty-first century, ours is still a Church of martyrs.”[1]  In the face of persecution, many are tempted to deny Christ or even God himself in order to save their lives or their status.

Or, in the face of a horrible disaster—a storm, a flood, an earthquake, a vicious crime—we might rage against God for permitting that or blame him for causing it.  We pray to be delivered from such a test of our faith—persecution or disaster—lest we not be strong enuf, faithful enuf, to pass the test and, instead, flee from Jesus like the apostles when he was arrested.

Or, as we approach death, we might tremble so much for our sins that we despair of God’s mercy—a terrible final test!  But all we need do is throw ourselves into his arms.

I’ll pass over what Jesus says about persistence and come to his conclusion about our ultimate prayer:  for the gift of the Holy Spirit (11:13).  We can’t ask for anything more, anything greater, than that.  The Holy Spirit binds us to God, fills us with divine love, empowers us to live like Christ.  In the Holy Spirit is our salvation.  “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love.”

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[1] Hope: The Autobiography, with Carlo Musso, trans. Richard Dixon (NY: Random House, 2025), p. 285.