Believing in and Trusting the Lord Jesus!

Today's first reading, Acts 16: 22-34, recounts the attack on Paul and Silas, who were beaten with rods and thrown into the "innermost cell" of the prison and their feet secured to a stake.  Around midnight Paul and Silas are praying and singing hymns to the Lord when suddenly a severe earthquake shakes the foundation of the jail. "All the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose."   Awakened, the jailer thought that everyone escaped and was about to  kill himself when Paul shouted: "Do no harm to yourself; we are all here."  The jailer rushed  in to where Paul and Silas were and said: "'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' And they said, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved.'"   

What do you, what do I do, when things go terribly wrong?  Pray and sing hymns to the Lord? Paul and Silas were totally into God, so to speak!  They certainly were not feeling sorry for  themselves and, in no way, took on the victim role.  Their faith in God remained unshaken!  They remained focused on Jesus and His resurrection; they faced their sufferings as Jesus Himself faced the crucifixion, believing in the Father's power over evil!  "All the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose."

What about us?  Right now, during this coronavirus crisis and the restrictions imposed upon us, do we find a reason to praise and give thanks to God?  Are we reaching out to the Lord for strength to endure and to grow in our faith and trust? Do we believe that God is seeing us through this crisis and that we will come through this as stronger individuals, our faith and trust unshaken? Or are we blistering mad because we cannot do what we would like to be doing and are we into seeking someone or something to blame?   If we choose to remain focused on Jesus and believe in His Presence among us, we will witness to the fact that God takes us by the hand and walks with us through this maze.  Furthermore, the door of our hearts will remain open to grace and the chains of hopelessness and frustration will not have a grip on us.

Advent: Preparing for Jesus' Coming

Advent:   A time to be alerted to the coming of Jesus, God with us,

Devoting time to seeing the Lord above all else,

Vying for greater intimacy with God, your Savior,

Ever mindful of one's need for redemption.

Now is the time to become reconciled

To the Lord, your God, and to one another in Christ Jesus and to make peace your goal!

"...[P]ray always without becoming weary," Jesus says to us in today's Gospel, Luke 18: 1-8.  The
widow in the parable repeatedly went to the judge in her town asking for "a just decision against her adversary." The judge was unwilling to hear her out but she repeatedly presented her need.  Finally he paid attention to her, fearing that she would strike him if he continued ignoring her.





God is not like that unjust judge. He willingly pays attention to our petitions. He sends the Holy Spirit  to those of  us who ask for the Spirit's help: His counsel, His fortitude, His consolation, His wisdom, His power, His intervention to bring about a good in our lives, in the lives of others and in the world of our day. We may not see that God is at work as a result of our  intercessory prayer, but faith tells us that it is so,  as it was with Jesus nailed to the cross during the crucifixion, begging that the Father forgive his persecutors (we are those persecutors when we sin against one another and against ourselves). The world we bring to Christ in prayer is always transfigured, made new, transformed from death to new life in Christ Jesus, whether we see the Spirit at work or not. God's redemptive work will not be thwarted by humanity and it is important that we bring that which needs God's intervention to Him in our prayer.
Like the widow, let us repeatedly bring our needs, the needs of our families, the needs of the world into our prayer, pleading that justice become a reality, that wrongs are righted,  as they were through Jesus' death on the cross, where sin was destroyed and we were set free of our slavery to sin.


May we realize the freedom God wants to give us day by day, hour by hour and accept His invitation to pray always--being honest with Him about our hopes, our fears,  our worries, our frustrations, in short, being real with the Lord, never hesitating to talk to God about anything and everything as we would with our soul mate.

Jesus' Instructions on How to Pray

In today’s Gospel, Mt 6: 7-15, Jesus  teaches His disciples, that is us, how to pray, directing us not to babble on in prayer with lots and lots of words.  I might do that in the hope that I will truly be heard.  In other words, knowingly or unknowingly, I am attempting to manipulate God to do as I say. However, Jesus says to us: Don’t multiply words in prayer; there is no need to do that.  Why? Because “Your Father knows what you need before you ask.” How, then, should you and I be praying?  Jesus then teaches us the Our Father.

“Our Father”—I am acknowledging God as my father, my abba, my daddy in heaven!
“Hallowed be thy name”—a phrase of reverence,  a statement of praise. This is God. I am only a human being created by God, who willed His creation of me to carry on a specific purpose of His here on earth.
“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done”—I am acknowledging God’s Kingdom as a reign He wants to happen here on earth in accordance to His will and as it exists in heaven.

So, in the first part of the “Our Father” I address God and acknowledge what belongs to God: reverence and  praise and that God is Ruler/King of heaven and earth with a perfect plan to be brought about on earth as in heaven: heaven is a place of joy, peace, order, serenity, justice, where there are no slaves, no inequalities, no lording it over one another, no divisiveness. That is His will for us on earth as well but He needs us to carry out that will.

 In the second half of the Our Father,  Jesus instructs us to pray for ourselves.  We ask for our daily bread (like the Israelites in the desert where God fed them one day at a time). We also ask forgiveness for the ways in which we do not live the first part of the Our Father. And finally, we pray that we will  not be led into temptation that Satan throws at us. We ask that God deliver us from the evil Satan wills for us, that is, separation from God for all eternity, beginning here on earth.

Persistent Knocking, Seeking, Finding

In today’s Gospel,  Luke 11:5-13, Jesus challenges us to be persistent in our praying. He gives the example of a person who, at midnight, goes to his friend’s house asking for bread to share with one of his friends who, unexpectedly, it seems, arrived at his house at midnight.  “I have nothing to offer him,” he says.  Imagine this friend refusing to give him anything, saying “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.”  But the needy friend is persistent and keeps knocking.  Jesus suggests that it may not be the friendship that prompts the positive response but the persistence. How persistent am I when I ask God for a favor?

More confusing, perhaps, to the person who has prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing, supposedly, happened is Jesus’ next statement:  “…ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”  So how does one explain this to someone whose prayers seem to go unanswered?

When I was a teenager, I prayed and prayed and prayed that my mother would not die and she did! I still do not have an answer to why God allowed a mother of six children to die of cancer when four of those children were still in grade school. I went through some very trying times, as her death was followed by other family tragedies with no one able to empathize with me, as they had not known such tragedies in their own lives.  Battling an onslaught of anxiety and panic attacks and having fallen into a deep depression during those difficult years, I learned to pray as a child—even had temper tantrums with God, expressing my anger toward Him. God confided to me that it was not He who had trouble with my anger but that I was the one who was bothered by it.  God and I grew very close, as He opened His arms and heart to me in overwhelming ways throughout the years, as I became more and more honest with Him about my feelings and what I was thinking and what I needed from Him that no one else could possibly give me. Yes, I learned to trust the Lord and rely upon Him. I would not trade that relationship with anything in the world!  God, I believed, answered my prayer as my mother intercedes for me and my siblings in ways that have produced miracles in all of our lives.