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. 

Want or Need?

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In my first few years as a priest, I would, from time to time, buy lotto tickets with my own money.  Every time I would buy a ticket, I would remind God that I would give at least 10% to the Church, and how much good $15 million (I would usually only play if the jackpot were $150 million or higher) could do.  And yet, I never seemed to win; I barely even won enough to pay for the tickets.  So I stopped playing.

I’m sure some of you have done that, have told God that if He just gave you some money, or something else you want, how much good you could do with it.  We tend to be, especially in our younger days, better at knowing what we want than what we need.  Sometimes what we want is what we need, but not always, and often that comes with a certain level of maturity.  As a kid at Christmas, it was always better to get toys than to get clothes (especially underwear!).  But toys will fall out of favor or break, while clothes (even underwear) are more necessary.

In our first reading and the Old Testament prefigurement of John chapter 6, we hear about the Israelites who are not happy with what the Lord in the desert.  They’re so ungrateful to God that they would rather go back to slavery than remain with God.  It’s interesting to really think about that: they would rather go back to slavery, to barely making it, to being subservient laborers making the grand buildings of the Pharaohs, than stay with God, who had destroyed Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea while the Israelites passed through safely.

We also hear about the Jews in this week’s installment of John, chapter 6.  Jesus knows that they are not following Him because they believe in Him, even after He fed more than 5,000 of them from 5 loaves and two fish.  They are following Him because they thought Jesus was what we could call now a vending machine that gives out free food.  And when Jesus pushes them to believe in Him, they demand another sign, another multiplication of loaves.  Instead of giving them what they want, Jesus says that He is the bread of life, and if anyone believes in Him he will never hunger or thirst.  

In both the first reading and the Gospel, the people want what they want, and reject what they need: God.  And we might think it is silly for people to prefer slavery to God, and to not recognize that Jesus is God based on His miracles.  But we have not always come so far; in our own lives we prefer things to God, and prefer slavery of our favorite sins to God.

So many times in our daily lives we think about things that we want, things that we think will make us happy.  Maybe it’s a person, maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend that we’re convinced we can’t live without.  Maybe we want lots of money, because we’re convinced it will make our life easy.  Maybe we want a better home with more space, or maybe a pool, or maybe that cottage up north on a lake.  There are so many things we can want, and focus our attention on, that we think will make us happy.  And none of those things are bad in themselves.  But they all come second to God, and not even a close second.  The person who has nothing but who has God can still be filled with joy.  The person who has everything but does not have God is never filled, and always feels that emptiness in his heart.  St. Paul encourages us in the second reading to put behind us the old way of life, the way of life where we focus on what we have and on what we can get, and to live in the new way of life where we recognize that we have all we need in Jesus.   

In fact, St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the saints depicted in our icons, says that virtue and holiness is found when we order rightly our loves, with the love of God first, and the love of everything else in its proper place after God.  It’s not wrong to want things, but do we think about those things more than we think about God?  Do we work harder to obtain those things than we work on our daily relationship with God?

There’s a beautiful Gospel hymn called “Give Me Jesus” that echoes this point.  It starts out, “In the morning, when I rise / In the morning, when I rise / In the morning when I rise / Give me Jesus. //  Give me Jesus, / Give me Jesus. / You can have all this world, / Give me Jesus.”  The next verse starts, “When I am alone,” and ends, “Give me Jesus.”  And the final verse starts, “When I come to die,” and ends, “Give me Jesus.”  The Gospel hymn reminds us that, at all times of our life, and even at the end of our life, we should recognize our need for Jesus.  The others are all wants, all desires that we may not really need.

That’s a hard prayer.  I know that I’m not perfect in preferring Jesus to everything.  But it’s my goal.  I have friends that I prefer to Jesus sometimes; maybe not when I think about it, but in the way I act.  But, if they are more important to me than God, then I’ve made an idol for myself, and I need to re-evaluate my priorities.  Of course, just because we prefer God to other people or other things doesn’t mean that we will necessarily lose them.  But we could if God asked us to, because God is enough for us.  In these moments of silence, think about what you desire the most.  What takes up most of your time and energy?  The many things that you want in your life, or the one thing that is truly necessary: Jesus?  You can have all this world, give me Jesus.