7/24/2016 – 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C – Luke 11:1-13

      Back before the Civil War, when steam boats sped up and down the Mississippi River with great regularity, a little boy stood on the banks of the river, waving and shouting as a large steamboat was going by.  He was calling out for the steamboat to come to the shore. A man standing near him remarked to his friend: “That foolish boy.  That boat will never come ashore.  The captain is way too busy navigating the river.  He would never pay attention to a little boy waving his arms and calling out to him.”  Just then, the man saw the boat take a sharp turn, heading for the shore of the river.   The little boy was so happy.  As the steamboat got closer, the little boy turned to the man with great pride and said: “That’s my daddy up there!  He’s the captain of the steamboat!” That is one of the revolutionary points about the Lord’s prayer that Jesus teaches the apostles in today’s Gospel, that God is Abba, Daddy, Father.  God is the captain of the universe, but he will also listen to his children with love, compassion, and concern.  

      Luke does not say when or where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s prayer, only that it happened at a certain place.  However, tradition has it that this teaching took place on the western slope of the Mount of Olives in a grotto often referred as the grotto of the Our Father, or the grotto of the teachings of Jesus.”  At the site of this cave there is a great rectangular courtyard with long porticos, with the formula of the Our Father appearing in 60 different languages.  Jesus would have taught his disciples this prayer in their vernacular language, Aramaic.  For many centuries, the Catholic faithful would have prayed the Our Father in Latin.  Now with the mass in the vernacular language throughout the world, each culture prays the Our Father prayer in its own everyday language.

      Our Gospel today asserts that we need to be persistent and persevering in our prayers.  Last week, we saw in the Gospel story of Mary and Martha how Martha wanted to welcome Jesus and his friends with hospitality and a home cooked meal.  Travelers in Ancient Israel often traveled during the evening to avoid the hot mid-day heat, often arriving at a host’s home late at night.  We can certainly relate to that with the heat wave we are having here in the state of Mississippi this summer and across the US this week.  The villagers of Ancient Israel went to bed early since they had no electricity.  So, it makes sense that the host in the parable tries to find something to eat for his newly arrived guests, trying to provide hospitality for them.  The host’s cupboard is bare, so he goes to his neighbor for food.  Many of the homes of Ancient Israel would have had just one sleeping chamber, so everyone in the household would have been woken up by the commotion, even the children.  It is the persistence of the host that gets him bread from his neighbor.  I don’t think that this parable is saying that God is a reluctant giver.   It instead calls our attention to the need for persistence in prayer as our way of depending upon God on our journey of faith.  When we persevere in our prayer, we better focus on our hopes and our desires, leading us to discover what God’s will is for us.  Often, I tell parishioners that in our persistence, we need to be open to the will of God, so indeed our hopes and desires may change in our prayers.  So often, Paul stresses that we need to pray without ceasing, to pray at all times, to be steadfast in our prayers.

      But praying to God is not like putting coins in a vending machine, selecting the type of soda pop we want, and getting exactly what we select. God is not a magic genie in a bottle who grants every request we have.  In God’s wisdom, he knows what to give us in our prayer requests.  He knows when and how.  When we ask God to give us our daily bread, we may have in mind our physical hunger, but God may point us to satisfying a spiritual and emotional hunger that we might not even be aware of.  Jesus wants us to ask and keep on asking, to seek and keep on seeking, to knock and keep on knocking.  Trusting God is an important part of our relationship with God. We may want God to answer our prayers in a dramatic dream or in a profound epiphany or vision.  Instead, the answer to our prayers may be this silent voice that we heart in the quiet recesses of our hearts.  There are many different types of prayers that we can pray as Catholics: prayers that express of needs and desires, prayers that give thanks to God, silent prayers that are contemplative and mystical, free flowing prayers that are in our own words, or set traditional prayers like a novena, a litany, or the rosary.  But, the Our Father that Jesus teaches us to pray, that certainly has a central place in our prayer life as Christians.   As the Early Church Father Tertullian said, the Our Father prayer is the “summary of the whole Gospel.”