Prayer's Jackpot

Fifth Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I hate to admit it, but I have, from time to time, asked God to win the lottery.  It wasn’t simply to get rich for myself, but because I would give money to the Church, probably help out some friends, and maybe set up trusts to support different charities even after I’m dead and gone.  In my ask, I always reminded God of how generous I would be, especially to the Church, as a way of helping Him to know that He could trust me with the responsibility of winning tens of millions of dollars.
    As our Lord talks about prayer and having confidence in what we ask of God, we may find it strange that I haven’t won the lottery yet (or maybe you have prayed the same thing and have not won the lottery, either).  “‘If you ask the Father anything in my name, He will give it to you,’” the Savior said in today’s Gospel.  And yet I can tell you that my request to God to win MegaMillions has not been answered.  So what gives?
    Of course, deep down we know that God will only give us what is good for us.  Elsewhere, Christ says, “‘What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?  Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?’”  God does not give us something that will bite us or hurt us, even if we think the thing for which we’re asking is good.
    Further, our Lord presumes that, as disciples, we are following the pattern He set for us, and being obedient to the will of the Father.  If we truly want to be obedient to God the Father, as Christ showed us, then when we ask the Father, we do so knowing that sometimes our wills are not fully conformed to His, and we might not need to receive that which He is giving us.  Sometimes that will mean we don’t receive something that we want.  Sometimes that will mean that we receive something that we don’t really want.  Remember that Christ asked in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might pass by Him if there was another way to save the world.  But, He ended that prayer with, “‘But not my will, but yours be done.’”  The Father had answered the prayer of our Lord over and over again, working miracles among the people.  This was made evident especially at the resurrection of Lazarus.  But God the Father’s will was also that His Son would die on the Cross to save us from sin, a will which God the Son fully embraced, with all its pain and suffering.
    Or think of St. Paul.  He talks about a thorn in his flesh, which he asked God to remove three times.  But God told the Apostle that this weakness was a way to manifest that the power came from God, not from Paul.  And that thorn was not taken away.  St. Paul had to endure it, as far as we know, for the rest of his life.  Somehow, that weakness was part of Paul’s salvation and the proclamation of the Gospel.
    Part of receiving also connects to our confidence and trust in God.  When we pray for something good, and we do our best to conform our wills to that of the Father, we still need to trust that God can do what we ask Him to do.  Christ in His hometown did not work many miracles because of their lack of faith.  Do we trust the words of our Savior that we heard today, that God will give us what we ask if we ask in the name of Christ His Son?  Or is our faith fickle that like of our Lord’s hometown neighbors?
    I can testify to times when I prayed in the name of the Lord, and what I sought in prayer was given to me.  I’m not saying this to say that I’m a saint or have special powers.  I am a sinner, trying to be holy, but not always succeeding, and any power comes from God, not from me.  I am simply an earthen vessel, trying not to get in the way of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes these, what I consider, miracles, have been about serious issues, like a person’s health.  Other times they have been for the finding of more trivial things, like stolen golf clubs or a stolen moped.  In one case, I can remember praying for a couple I know, and my prayers seemed to have no effect.  I prayed with them again, and the effect they were seeking came to be.  Again, this is not to attribute anything to me as if I’m special; I’m not.  God wants to answer our prayers, according to His will, whether the request be for something we feel is very worthy, or even for things that don’t mean as much.

    And sometimes the answer is no.  It wouldn’t be a Fr. Anthony homily without some reference to country music, and what comes to my mind is the Garth Brooks song, “Unanswered Prayers,” in which he sings about a girl he knew in high school whom he prayed he would marry, but his prayers went unanswered.  Years later he met his wife, and they met this old flame, and he was glad that God didn’t answer those prayers.  Or Brad Paisley has a song called, “No,” where he talks about different prayers he said, but “sometimes the answer is no.”  Sometimes we think our will is aligned with God’s, but it’s not, and it’s not for our good, so God can answer our prayers with the opposite answer we desire.  It’s not that God doesn’t care or doesn’t love us, but that He answers our prayer with a response that is better for us.
    It is easy to hear how God answers prayers and think, “yeah, but that’s for other people.”  Don’t just hear, but live the word, be a doer of the word, and trust in God’s answers to your prayers.  Go to God with any need or desire you have.  Submit it to the will of God, and then trust that the answer you receive, either yes or no, will be good for your own salvation and the salvation of those you know and love.  God’s answers are a jackpot worth even more that a MegaMillions prize, because they bring us closer into the life of the Blessed Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Wasting Time with Jesus

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Brad Paisley, one of the great country music singers of our time, has a song he released in 2005 called, “Time Well Wasted.”  He goes through all the things he could have been doing, things that were very practical, like raking leaves, washing the car, etc., but talks about how spending time with his love was “time well wasted.”

America, in particular, has a thing against “wasting” time.  We place work and productivity on a very high pedestal.  And there’s something good about that.  Work can be sanctifying if we unite it to Jesus, and producing new ideas and new products helps to better society.  But the temptation in our prodigiousness, the excess of that virtue of working hard, is working too hard, and missing out on the important things of life.  I remember when I was studying in Italy how things would close down for a few hours around lunch.  Now, I don’t mean to offend, and certainly I don’t want to stereotype too much, but in Europe, Italians are not known for being hard workers in the first place.  But they always make sure to take a break in the middle of the day for pranzo, lunch, and a nice riposo, a nice nap.  And while we might think that’s a waste of daylight, there’s something good about spending time with family and friends to enjoy a leisurely meal and rest.  The work will always be there, but as some people learn in tragic ways, friends and family are not always with us on earth.

Bishop Barron, in his new series on the Mass, talks about how the Mass is the ultimate form of play.  That might seem counterintuitive, given how serious we take the Mass.  But, think about children and how seriously they take playing.  Or think about sports and how seriously we take playing those games.  There are rules, there are expectations, there are uniforms.  So often, we think that the most important thing is work, and we play if we have time.  But play can be more important, especially when we talk about the Mass.

It’s no secret that people don’t go to Mass anymore.  We notice it as we look around, and as we prepare for the transition to two Masses per weekend.  So why are Masses so scarcely populated, and not just here in Flint, where people continue to leave the city, but around the United States and around the world?

Jesus, after His disciples had returned, invited the apostles to go off “to a deserted place and rest awhile.”  The ones whose very title, “apostle,” means one who is sent out, need time to rest with Jesus.  And what do we do at Mass, if not rest with Jesus?  We worship God, and that is most important, but just like the Jews on the Sabbath, we rest, and worshipping God allows us to rest from our labors, not because we are lazy, but because we imitate God in resting from His work of creation.  I think that part of the reason for people not coming to Mass is that they expect the Mass to provide something that it’s not meant to provide.  If you want to be entertained at Mass, then you will surely be disappointed, because the Mass is not a movie or a show.  If you want an emotional or spiritual high, then you may be disappointed, because the Mass is not meant to appeal to every personality style and temperament every week.  If you want music that speaks to you each and every time, then you’re putting way too much pressure on the Mass, because Catholic music, truly Catholic music, is meant to be adding dressing to Scripture.  Can we be entertained at Mass?  It happens; some priests are funny, and others, like me, are just funny-looking.  Can we get an emotional or spiritual high?  It can happen, and praise God when it does!  Can music touch our hearts in a way that mere words cannot?  Sometimes the words put together with a certain musical setting hits us right in the feels.  But Mass is meant to help us worship God and rest in Him.  

I know that’s a tough message.  I know it’s not the message we want to hear, because we want to be entertained, we want the high, we want the feels.  But too many sheep have wandered away from the fold because what they want from the Mass is not what the Mass is meant to give.  Sometimes even priests have mislead and scattered the flock by overly inserting themselves in the Mass, making the Mass a performance of their personality, instead of celebrating the Mass as the Church asks.  And I also know that sometimes, despite my own best efforts, my homilies are boring.  Our sound system could also use some updating. 

But I invite you to come to St. Pius X each weekend after your weekly work of spreading the Gospel to rest with Jesus and to worship Him, who brought us near by His blood, and who reconciled us to God through His Body through the Cross.  Sunday sports may sound more enticing.  The lawn may need mowing and the laundry may need cleaning.  The kids may be a handful and may be noisy.  But come to Mass anyway, to rest with Jesus.  And since you all already do come to Mass, tell your kids, tell your godchildren, tell your friends that Jesus knows you need a rest–not entertainment, not an emotional or spiritual roller coaster, but rest.  Receive the Body of Christ.  Taste the fountain of immortality.  Waste time with Jesus and worship Him who gives you the precious gift of rest in Him.

How to Pray

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Do we know how to pray?  Maybe that seems like an odd question as we are gathered here in the greatest prayer of the Church.  But I think it’s one we need to ask: do we know how to pray?

            Now, probably all of us know prayers.  Hopefully we can recite the trifecta of Catholic prayers—the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be—from memory.  But the question was not if we know prayers, but if we know how to pray.  Simply knowing how to recite prayers is not the same as knowing how to pray. 

            Jesus in our Gospel teaches us how to pray.  Yes, He teaches us a prayer as well (we get St. Luke’s version of the Our Father today), but He also teaches us how to pray.  First and foremost, we are taught to pray to God our Father.  While God the Father is neither male nor female, and Jesus Himself, having male gender, even uses the image of a hen to describe His own care for Jerusalem, Father is not just an image of God, it is the way we are taught to address God, the Name we are to use in calling upon Him.  Whenever we pray, we should address our prayers to the Father, in the same way that Jesus always did.

            We also see that first we are to praise and thank God.  So often, and this is certainly true in my own life, we skip immediately to asking God for something.  But, if we are to follow Jesus’ model of prayer, then first we give God glory; not because it adds anything to Him by being praised, but because it is proper for the creature to praise and thank God for what has already been given.  Then, and only then, are we to ask God for what we need—daily needs, forgiveness, and the grace to persevere in living a Christian life. 

            This should be the format of our prayer: calling upon God as our Father, praising and thanking Him for his goodness, and then asking God for what we need.  We do the same thing in the Eucharistic Prayer, the high point of our prayer of the Mass: we call upon God, we praise and thank Him, and then we ask for what we need.

            Jesus also tells us to pray with confidence, because our loving Father will never deprive us of any good gift.  When we ask for what we need, we will receive it.  Of course, this has to be read in the light of the line from the Our Father: “thy will be done.”  Just because we think we need something, does not mean we truly do.  While some of us may think it at times, none of us is omniscient.  But God is, and so gives us exactly what we need to further our pilgrimage that hopefully ends in eternal salvation. 

            All too often, we approach prayer to God like making a list for Santa: Dear God, I’ve been very good this year (which may or may not be true), so please give me this, that, and the other thing.  But God is not Santa.  We cannot force His hand, nor do the answers to our prayers come because of any good thing we’ve done.  The answer comes not from our goodness, but from God’s.  And when we try to justify ourselves, to prove to God that we deserve something because we’ve been so good, we end up like the Pharisee in one of Jesus’ parables, who, when he prayed, extolled himself, while the Tax Collector, who stood at the back of the temple and beat his breast in sorrow for sins, and only asked God for mercy for his many sins.  Remember that Jesus said that the Tax Collector went home justified, while the Pharisee did not.

            Our Gospel, as well as our first reading, also reminds us to have confidence in prayer.  “‘Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.’”  When we ask that God’s will be done, and when we are united to God by conforming our lives to that of Jesus, then what we ask the Father in the name of Jesus will be granted to us.  We see it in the first reading when Abraham pleads for Sodom and Gomorrah.  God truly would have spared those cities if there would have been 50, or 45, or 40, or 30, or 20, or even just 10 innocent people.  Abraham had confidence in his relationship with God, not viewing God as an equal, but knowing that he could make his desires known to God, and that God would listen.  God even saves Lot and his family from destruction, though he does destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their sinfulness.

            I have seen the results of confidence in prayer in my own prayer life.  In the past year, I have had two experiences of prayers being heard.  Addressing God as Father, praising Him for his goodness and His love, I poured out my soul to God for a young man who had recently buried his father and then had been robbed.  I prayed that what had been stolen would be returned, since this young man had already lost so precious a gift as a loving father.  The stolen goods were returned the next day.  Calling upon God as Father, thanking Him for His generosity, I prayed for an MSU student who had been robbed of his moped.  I called upon God to be faithful, in the Name of Jesus, and through the intercession of St. Anthony, and have the moped returned, and it was on the next day.  Were either of the stolen items precious?  Not really.  Either could have been replaced.  But God, as a loving Father, looked with mercy upon me, and upon these two persons who had been robbed, and granted them back what they wanted.  For whatever reason, that was part of His will.  Maybe, the only reason was to allow me to tell this story to you, to inspire you in faith to have confidence when you pray. 

Will God always give us what we want?  As the Brad Paisley songs goes, “sometimes the answer is no.”  But prayer, true prayer, always brings us closer to God, and that is a gift that is more precious than all the gold in the world.  Whether we are praying using a prayer that we have memorized, or we our speaking with our own words, may our prayer always be like the prayer of Jesus, and so draw us closer to our heavenly Father.