Not Why, but What

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Sometimes the way that God answers prayers doesn’t appear obvious.  Some people pray for a miraculous cure for their family member or friend and they get a miracle.  Other people say the same prayers and yet their loved one dies.  A natural disaster like a tornado or a hurricane demolishes one church, but another which is in the direct path has only minor damage.  Why?
    Some would like to attribute it to personal holiness.  And certainly being a friend of God, not only in name but also in deed, doesn’t hurt when asking God for a favor.  But that’s not what happened in the first reading.  The prophet Elijah went to Zarephath, which was a pagan town.  The widow he helped during the famine was not Jewish, but worshipped false gods.  Yet God answered her prayer for sustenance through Elijah, though many Jewish widows had to see their children die of starvation.  Jesus also speaks about how “there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”  

    So how does God answer prayers?  Why do the prayers of some get heard, while others seemed to be ignored?  God never ignores prayers, but He doesn’t always answer them as we want.  And, to be honest, we don’t often know why He answers some prayers as people want, but not others as they want.  Why God allows good things to happen to bad people, and bad things to happen to good people is a conundrum we won’t know on this side of eternity.  Sometimes we do see that an answered prayer helps a non-believe believe, or that even a seemingly-unanswered prayer doesn’t shake the faith of one who believes in God, who accepts even a negative outcome gracefully.  But often, we don’t have the answer to why.
    So what do we do?  We ask a different question.  And that question is not “why?”, but “what?”.  What do we know?  We know that God loves us, and that, as St. Paul says, “all things work for the good of those who love God.”  Whatever God wills for us, and even whatever He allows us to undergo, helps us to be the saints that He wants us to be.  Sometimes what God wills and what God allows seems beneficial to us, like an unexpected raise, or recovery from an illness.  Sometimes what God allows does not seem so beneficial.  But He desires that everything we might undergo, even the tragic death of a loved one, would increase or faith, hope, and love in Him.
    We also know, as we hear in the second reading, that Christ is forever interceding for us to our heavenly Father.  Though He is also God, Christ stands in the heavenly Jerusalem, the sanctuary not made with hands, bringing our prayers, made in the power of the Holy Spirit, to God the Father.  Christ offers Himself, not in a bloody way, but in an unbloody way, to the Father, bringing our humanity to God throughout all time.  He offers Himself always so that our sins might be taken away, just as He offered, once for all, the perfect sacrifice on the cross for the salvation of all the world.  And Christ, who shares our human nature, always asks the Father to give us what we need for our sanctification.  
    During this month of November, which we began with the celebration of All Saints, we also know that all the saints plead with God for us and our needs.  They do so, not to change the will of God, but to submit our desires and our prayers to the will of God which is always for our good.  I often ask St. Anthony to help me or others find things that they have lost.  Or maybe you pray to St. Monica to ask God to give your children who have left the faith the openness to the grace to return to His Holy Church.  Or maybe you ask St. Joseph to intercede for a loved one who is terminally ill for the grace of a happy death.  Or whatever other desire you might have.  The saints cannot do anything but that which is in accord with the will of God.  But they always ask God that our desires might be aligned with His so that our faith, hope, and love will find more strength and resiliency.  
    Lastly, we know that God desires that we trust Him.  The poor widow who gave all the money that she had trusted that God would provide.  God doesn’t always ask for money, though we should support the Church financially, but He does always ask for the gift of our entire selves.  He wants all of us, not just parts of us.  He even wants the sinful parts of us, so that He can transform them by the power of his grace and mercy.  Just as Christ offers all of who He is to the Father in the Holy Spirit, so the Father desires that we offer all of who we are, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to Him.  And when we offer all of who we are, God offers all of who He is, which is a treasure beyond imagining, not in the sense the world uses treasure, but in the sense of the deepest longing of our hearts.  
    We don’t always know God’s ways.  We may never fully understand why some prayers are answered the way we want, but others God does not answer the way we want.  But we know that God loves us, that He always acts for our good and salvation, and that the best gift we can give God is the gift of ourselves, trusting in His will and plan for our salvation.  

Giving God Your Nothing Left

 Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
    People think priests have a hard life.  And, in some ways, we do.  We’re on call 24/6 (I do get one day off per week), it’s not uncommon to have evening meetings after a full day of work, because that’s when people are most often free to meet.  Because people have their own ideas (sometimes based in theology, sometimes not) about how long homilies should be, how warm (or cold) the church should be, what songs should be sung, etc., the priest often gets peppered with complaints from all sides.  So yeah, it is tough at times, but we are also taken care of and loved pretty well.
    I think parents have a hard life.  If it put myself in their shoes, I wouldn’t want to be working all day, probably putting up with many similar things as priests in terms of working conditions, complaints, expectations, etc., and then come home, only to have to prepare some dinner, often from scratch, clean-up after dinner, help the kids with homework, and then, hopefully, have some time to catch up with a few things around the house, maybe have a little alone time with the spouse, before going to bed to start all over on the next day.  That sounds like a tough vocation!!
    I know I have been, and I’m sure parents have been, at the point where I feel like I’ve got nothing left.  Maybe it’s been a long day, or there’s a long day coming on the following day, or an earlier start, and I’m exhausted, and then there’s a call to go to the hospital, or, because I work with MSP, to go out to a homicide or meet with a Trooper who can use some comforting words.  And I know parents are in a similar boat so frequently.  So you give, even though you think you’ve got nothing left to give, and somehow, it works out to be enough.
    The same was true for the widows we heard about in the first reading and the Gospel.  Can you imagine being in a famine, and all you have left is a handful of flour, just enough to make a couple of cakes for you and your son, and then this man of God comes and asks you to make some for him?  I think if I did that, I’d be run out of the house, maybe even the parish and county!  But the woman gives, and Elijah makes sure that the woman doesn’t run out during the famine.  She gave beyond what she thought she could, and God rewarded that generosity.

Examples of the widow's coins

    Or in the Gospel, the widow is giving two coins that she needs probably to feed herself to the temple, to offer to God something.  The value wasn’t large, but the sacrifice was her everything.  She gave, even after she had nothing left.  And yet, the Lord commends her gift, more than those who were putting in large amounts of money, because she was giving when she had nothing left, while the others were giving while making sure they had something left over.  
    God invites us to trust in Him as we give to Him.  And I’m not talking only about money (though, we’re always happy to receive that from you).  I’m talking about giving to God time and energy and whatever is going on in your life, even if you don’t think you’re giving God much, even if you feel like what you have to give to God isn’t worth giving.
    Maybe life is crushing you right now, and it takes all you can muster to come to Mass.  It would be so much easier to stay home and rest.  And yet, you came to give God that little bit.  And God will reward that.  Or maybe you’re just trying to make sure your kid doesn’t run away during Mass, or trying to make sure that he or she is not a major distraction (though, truth be told, I am rarely distracted by kids and love having them around at Mass).  You don’t think you’re getting much out of Mass, but you’re giving to God what little attention you can call up while you supervise your child at Mass.  And God accepts that and makes it a loving sacrifice, received with gratitude because it’s your gift.
    Parents often get gifts from their children that are made at school that are not that expensive, and maybe are not Michelangelo sculptures or Rembrandt paintings.  But those are still treasured gifts (how many moms have kept those little gifts throughout the years!?) because the child is giving what he or she can.  The same is true for God: when we give God what we can, He treasures it as the perfect gift.
    God even receives the fallen parts of us, our sins.  Through the Sacrament of Penance (aka confession or reconciliation), God deigns to take our brokenness and failings from us, so that we can be made whole.  I know that sometimes it seems like the sins may be small, or maybe the sins are awkward to acknowledge, or maybe it’s just that we confess the same sins over and over again.  In any case, God wants to receive that as our small gift, the last little bit we have left, so that it doesn’t stand in the way of our relationship with Him.  Obviously our sins are not good; they’re not our finest moments as human beings.  But God takes it upon Himself so that we might have life in place of death, grace in place of sin, light in place of darkness.
    I don’t know about you, but I feel like more and more people are at their wit’s end these days.  I meet people who feel like they have nothing left to give.  At that moment, offer to God that nothing, that fatigue, that exhaustion.  It may not seem like much, but neither did the two coins offered by the widow in the Gospel, or the handful of flour offered by the widow in the first reading.  But if it’s what you have, God will accept and bless it, and will make it enough.

A Leap from the Lion's Head

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Early in our pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2017 we are traveling to Petra in Jordan (sign-up on our webpage if you’re interested!).  Petra is the place where the final scenes in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” were filmed, that building that seemed to be carved into rocks.  Yes, it’s real (at least the outside is).  If you remember, in the movie, Indiana, has to face three trials before he can reach the chamber with the Holy Grail, and to do so he uses three clues.  In the first trial, he kneels, as “only the penitent man will pass.”  The second trial deals with the Name of God, which is very inaccurate because the Name Jehovah was not used until much later and is a German invention based upon the Tetragrammaton, the sacred Name of God in the Old Testament.  In the third and final trial to get to the grail chamber, Indiana is faced with a deep chasm, too wide to jump across, but which must be crossed.  His clue is: “only by a leap from the lion’s head will he prove his worth.”  As Indiana says, “It’s a leap of faith.”  I won’t spoil the rest of the movie for you.

Our readings present us with a challenge of faith, not to seek the Holy Grail, but to grow in our relationship with Jesus and be prepared for heaven.  Our first reading and Gospel in particular give us examples of faith to encourage us to have faith.

In the first reading, the widow of Zarephath and her son are about to run out of food because of the famine that God has sent upon the Land.  God sends Elijah to the widow for water and bread.  We hear this story, and we know the end, so of course we know it’s going to work out.  But for the widow, who had no idea, and who was not even a Jew, Elijah’s request must have been horribly painful: “‘Please bring along a bit of bread.’”  She has only a little bit of oil and flour, and after she makes a cake, she and her son will have nothing left, and they will die from starvation.  But Elijah promises her that she and her son will have food enough until the rains return and she is able to get more food.  She complies, and they have flour and oil enough for a year.  Again, we know the ending, so we easily gloss over it.  But imagine that you had only one pack of ramen noodles left for you and your child, and someone who claimed to speak for God, but belonged to a different religion, asked to share that one pack with you, all the while promising that you would have enough.  Would you have shared?  I know we all want to think that we would, but would we truly have faith to share?

Or the poor widow who gave her two small coins to the temple treasury to pay for the upkeep of the temple.  She gave all that she had, even though it was a little bit of money.  As a widow, she had no one to plead her cause, no one to provide her with food, and no one to protect her.  But she had faith that God would provide, and so she offered God what little she had.  Jesus commends that faith in the Gospel passage we heard from today, and makes her the example, though we don’t even know if she knew Jesus, had faith in Him, or ever encountered Him.

Faith is easy when our bellies are full.  Faith is easy when we feel like we have enough to make ends meet.  Faith is much harder when we have nothing and no one to rely on but God.  That happens with all too many people who lack food and drink.  That happens to all too many people who have no money even though they have tried to work and save.  But it is not limited to our bellies and our pocketbooks.  Whenever we feel like the rug has been pulled out from under us, it is hard to have faith.  But that’s when we find out how strong our faith is.  That’s when we find out in what or in whom we really do put our trust.

Some priests on this weekend will preach about money, and donating to the Church, just like the widows did with Elijah and in the Temple.  This is not that homily.  I’m not asking you to give more money, because, as you seen from our bulletin updates, you are already being generous, and I thank you for that generosity.  But I will ask you to give something much more precious than your money to God.  The gift of money sometimes is the sign of the gift that God truly wants, but not always.  God wants your heart, and he’s asking you to make a leap of faith, to trust in Him, and to give Him your love.

When we truly love someone, they become the focus of our attention, and we rearrange our lives around that person.  Parents take off work, and maybe even lose their jobs because they love their children who are sick or in danger.  Do we love God more than that?  Do we love God enough to make our relationship with Him the number one priority in our life?  Not: I’ve got a million things to do this weekend, so hopefully I make it to Mass; not: my bed’s so warm, I’ll sleep a little longer and skip my daily prayers; not: I know our St. Vincent de Paul Society or Knights of Columbus or CCW could use some help, but I’ll do that next month when I have more time.  Instead: Mass is the first thing I plan on the weekend, and everything else fits around that; or: I’m tired, but God loves to hear even my tired prayers; or: how can I serve others with my time?

It takes a leap of faith to make God the number one priority in our lives.  It can be scary.  God can sometimes take us places we never expected to go.  But a relationship with Jesus requires faith: faith like the widow from Zarephath had; faith like the poor widow in the Temple had.  Lord, we want to have faith in you; help us have faith in you more.