October 17, 2004: The Rhythm of Prayer

29th Sunday of the Year


[ I will be away this weekend, so I am sending another "oldie goldie" homily from this cycle. — FJL ]

You may remember the famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead. One of her many husbands, who was also an anthropologist, observed that the natives on his little South Pacific island prayed very hard over their yam gardens after planting them.

“Very interesting,” he thought. “Poor superstitious people. They think that prayer can actually make their gardens produce more!” So he chuckled to himself about how naïve and gullible they were.

But then, he remembered that he was a scientist and that, in principle, he ought to try some kind of controlled experiment before he wrote off the natives as ignorant savages. So he decided that he would plant his own yam gardens in two spots that seemed exactly similar in style and sunlight. He also resolved to tend each of the gardens with equal care. Then he would pray over one but not the other.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know any prayers. But he did have a Hebrew Bible with him. He didn’t understand Hebrew, but he could pronounce the words from going to Hebrew school as a boy. So he read a couple of passages each day from the Bible over one of the gardens. He later admitted that he probably gave a little extra care to the garden without the prayer, because he really didn’t want the prayer to work.

But it did. He had no idea what to make of the outcome of his experiment and repeated it several times. Each time the prayer worked.

In a way, we priests are like gardeners — and you thought that we were just “fishers of men”! Our number one job is to pray for the people. That’s the main reason why every week we have one or more Mass intentions in the bulletin for all parishioners of St. Paul’s Parish, living and deceased.

For all Christians — and especially for priests — prayers should be assumed. But we sometimes need a reminder. Today, Jesus tells a parable about “the necessity to pray always without becoming weary” (Luke 18, 1). He gives the example of a woman who lacks the usual leverage — looks, money, power, a husband. The only resource she has is persistence. Jesus tells us that when we pray, we should imitate her.

Priests make a commitment to a serious life of prayer when we are ordained. As part of our prayer life, we also accept the obligation to pray the Divine Office every day — lauds [Morning Prayer] in the morning, vespers [Evening Prayer] in the evening … and also the Office of Readings, Daytime Prayer, and Compline [Night Prayer] at night. By doing this, we strive to dedicate each segment of the day to God with the psalms, a short meditation, some intercessions. In a way, you might say we live on “liturgical time” — which is almost a poetic kind of time aimed at giving glory to God and spending some precious moments with Him rather than being productive or getting things done on schedule in the usual sense.

A parish priest, even as he chooses among a hundred tasks, has to give first place to this kind of poetic time. People often ask, “Father, please pray for me.” When I say I will, I don’t want my answer to be just a throw-away line. I make a conscious effort to recall people’s specific requests, especially the most serious ones. But at the very least, I assume their requests into my times of prayer: “for all those I promised to pray for, Lord, please give them what they most urgently need.”

And to a similar but understandably lesser extent, God asks the very same of you.

You might wonder why we need to pester God with so many requests when He already knows our needs. Let me propose two reasons.

First, simply because Jesus has told us to. “Ask and you shall receive… Knock and the door shall be opened” (Matthew 7, 7). He even gives us as a model the person who drives a public official crazy by her nagging. God evidently has a tender spot for souls like these.

The second reason is that God has set things up so our prayers can have an impact on the world. Let me give you an example. I could say, “God knows I need salt on my eggs to enjoy them, so why bother picking up the salt shaker?” But no one says that, because we know our participation is required to get results. Even though we don’t see it so directly, the same is true of prayer. God has ordered the world so that what matters most depends on our prayer.

That’s why we must pray constantly, and we have to spread out our prayer — just like we do with many things in our life.

Nobody decides that he’s going to eat a giant quantity of food on Monday and then not have to eat for the rest of the week. We don’t take ten deep breaths and say, “Good! That’s over for a while. Now I don’t have to breathe for a couple of hours.”

No, prayer must become like eating and breathing. It must permeate our life and our time. In a way, prayer becomes our life, and our heavenly Father who loves us so, wants to draw us to Himself and give us every good gift — especially those things we pray for. As Our Lord has said, “Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours” (Mark 11, 24).


Today's Readings:
Exodus 17, 8–13
Psalm 121
2 Timothy 3, 14 – 4, 2
Luke 18, 1–8 (Key reading)