Paean to Prayer & Pac-Man

The 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

I was over at Best Buy in Champaign last week because my television died and I wanted to get a new one. As I headed toward the back of the store, I couldn’t help but notice the display of video game consoles. No, I didn’t buy one of those (!) — but still, I was quite impressed. You can choose PlayStation or Xbox or that amazing Wii system. The graphics are incredible — so good, in fact, that you sometimes think you’re watching a movie.

Today’s game technology is certainly a far cry from the first video systems. I remember that my friends and I were mesmerized by Pong back in mid-70’s: a white dot bouncing on a black screen, like video ping pong. Wow! And then, a few years later, Pac-Man came out, with those relentless critters munching everything in their path.

Believe it or not, I thought about Pac-Mac when I read our first bible passage today from the Old Testament Book of Sirach. The text says that the prayer of the oppressed and lowly penetrates heaven. It pierces the clouds and does not rest until it reaches it goal. Just like Pac-Man. Single-minded and unstoppable.

That message is pretty amazing. Not only does this prayer get heard in heaven — in other words, it reaches God’s ears — but it keeps echoing and resounding and bouncing around God’s in-box until he acts upon it!

Now remember, the prayer that we’re talking about is the prayer of the oppressed and lowly. These are people leading quiet, peaceful, humble lives, but who are hated or abused or put down by others. They could be folks who are of the wrong class, born on the wrong side of the tracks, of the wrong color, wrong sexual orientation, wrong IQ, wrong school, wrong family, wrong church… there are many possibilities. Even Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, says in the second reading today that he was deserted, detested and oppressed.

To round out our readings, the gospel tells us that God, who sees all and knows all, can easily cut to the heart of the truth in his human creatures. Smug, self-satisfied souls who think they’re so great maybe aren’t so great in God’s sight after all. But the humble folks who know they have faults — and lots of them! — will be heard in heaven and lifted up. How’s that for a reality check?

Most of us know that an overinflated ego and bragging can be rude and annoying in human society. But why does God care? Why doesn’t he just ignore the bravado and laugh it off?

The main reason is quite simply that God always chooses to work through each of us to build up the world and impart his blessings to other people. Like it or not, we are God’s vehicle… his instrument. When we exalt ourselves, we limit God’s options because we become unavailable as a sign and witness to others. They don’t see God in us, just our giant ego. But God wants us to be open to everybody, especially the most despised — the lowly and oppressed. If you think back on your own life experiences, you’ll probably discover that God has a knack for frequently tossing us in with people we like the least! That’s why; we have a job to do!

A second truth is that if we exalt ourselves, we cannot exalt Christ. God wants our lives, our gifts, our words and our deeds to all point to Christ, not to ourselves. The channel of revelation works like this: we lead people to Christ, and Christ leads them to God. We reveal Jesus, and Jesus reveals God. By pointing only to ourselves, we prevent others from seeing Christ who wants to show them God. In other words, our big ego breaks the chain of revelation.

Think about a practical little example. I’m lying in a hospital bed. My doctor has just told me how sick I really am. I can’t believe my ears. As the doctor leaves the room, I find myself talking to God about my condition. “Now, Lord,” I begin, “you know I’ve always been faithful to you. I’m your priest! I say mass every day, try to be available to the flock you’ve entrusted to me. We have some great conversations, you and me, don’t we? Why, I’m one of your greatest witnesses! Now Lord, about this illness…”

Then, from the next bed, I hear the soft sounds of muffled weeping — the voice of someone as though calling out to a parent. “Oh, Lord, have mercy. I’m lying here sick and in pain. The only thing I have to believe in is your love. Oh, Healer, your will be done in this body. Work out your love in this spirit. Help this sinner, Lord.”

When I hear this prayer, I can’t help but wonder about my own need for God. Will God listen if I admit that I’m feeling scared, weak and helpless? I never thought so. Yet now, in the face of my sickness, all the good deeds I’ve relied on to give me a sense of self-worth seem so trivial… almost pathetic. Who’s going to come to show me how to empty my heart of my self-righteousness so it can be filled instead with God’s merciful love — the stuff I really need?

Today’s a perfect day to begin to adjust our attitudes and realign things in our lives. Breathe out the vanity of self-love and self-righteousness… breathe in God’s love. May we truly re-experience God’s grace as we continue our faith journey, knowing that the tender mercy of God’s love is what really gives us a sense of power and self-worth.

Praying with Persistence

The 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

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 the same 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.

To a large extent, we are all gardeners. We may not be raising yams, but we could be raising children… or nurturing a career… or cultivating a relationship… or trying to get some other seeds in our life to sprout. No matter what our gardens are growing, if we want to give them an extra-special edge and make them as productive as possible—our number one job is to pray with persistence. Why? Because it works.

When we get all caught up in the busy-work of our gardening, sometimes it’s easy to forget about the praying part. That’s why we can use a reminder from time to time.

That’s why Jesus tells a parable today about “the necessity to pray always without becoming weary” (Lk 18:1). He gives the example of a widow who comes before a judge looking for justice. She lacks the kind of leverage that she needs to take care of things on her own—looks, money, power, a husband. The only resource she has is her persistence. We don’t know if she was patient, but there’s no indication that she threatened the judge or even her opponent. There is nothing about weapons, lawyers, or a mob of angry widows trying to force the judge to act quickly and in her favor. She seeks justice, not revenge or retribution. In this parable, Jesus tells us that when we pray, we should imitate her.

The judge in the story relented, not because he was so good, but because she wouldn’t give up. Her persistence paid off.

But doesn’t it almost seems silly or insulting to nag God for the things we need and want? After all, God knows everything. So why do we need to pester him with all our requests? Let me propose two reasons.

The first reason is simply because Jesus has told us to. “Ask and you shall receive… Knock and the door shall be opened” (Mt 7:7). He even gives us as our model this 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 from God’s viewpoint, our prayers have an impact on both us and the world. Let me give you an example. I could say, “God knows I need salt on my french fries to enjoy them, so why bother picking up the salt shaker? Can’t I just pray for salt?” But nobody says that, because we know we have to do our part to get results. The same is true of prayer. When we pray, we are cooperating with God to make good things happen in the world.

That’s why we’ve got to pray constantly, and we have to spread out our prayer—just like we do with many things in our life. Nobody decides that they’re 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 God who loves us so, wants to 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” (Mk 11:24).

Sometimes, we may look around our world and think that despite the persistence of many holy people, God has not answered some very important prayers. After all, where’s peace in the Middle East? Why hasn’t hunger been eradicated? Why do so many people keep suffering from terrible diseases?

Actually, God is quite persistent, too. Without ceasing, he is moving us forward, upward, toward truth and goodness. It may not always seem that way. We can be stubborn and even evil, especially when we act out of fear and lack of faith, but the march of God’s creative power continues. Even death can’t stop it—not the death of a Savior sent by God, not the death of so many of his precious children. Yes, God is persistent in just the same way that Jesus says we should be.

What’s more, God is always and continually at work among us. We can see it if we look. Sometimes the worst of times are when people pull together to do their greatest work. God sees the good in us, even when we would deny justice to one another. Like the widow in the parable, in the end, we will be vindicated.

I pray that we’ll all take to heart today’s beautiful lesson to hang in there with joyful hope and keep praying, always and everywhere.

Everyday Miracles

The 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

Just last week, there was a story in the news about Father V. M. Thomas, a Catholic missionary priest in India. One day last February, he woke up in excruciating pain. He went to the doctor and found out that he was suffering from a half-inch kidney stone blocking his lower urinary tract. When the usual, non-invasive treatments didn’t work, surgery was scheduled for September 6 to remove the stone. The day before the procedure was the tenth anniversary of the death of Mother Teresa. Father Thomas offered mass and asked the people to pray for him, especially through Mother Teresa’s intercession. Lo and behold, when the radiologist took a final presurgical x-ray, he couldn’t locate the kidney stone. The doctors then tried looking for it with an ultrasound, which also was negative. The stone was gone. Fr. Thomas is convinced that Mother Teresa is responsible for his amazing cure. He calls it a miracle.

Do you believe in miracles? I do. I definitely think that God’s magic still happens. In fact, it happens so often that our senses—miracles in themselves—aren’t even able to keep up. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t experience all the wonder around us. We grow numb to the extraordinary world that surrounds us.

Several people have told me that if you ever cruise through the Norwegian fjords or the glacier route of Alaska, you will experience some of God’s most miraculous beauty. I know first-hand that if you walk on the beach at sunset, it’s easy to believe in miracles. It’s easy to praise God for the glory of living and creation.

The trouble is, most of our moments aren’t spent in such idyllic settings. We rush through our daily lives being jostled and hassled and pushed by others who are also in a hurry. We struggle with bothersome inconveniences, stressing ourselves out trying to meet human deadlines. And we do it all in surroundings that bore us with their familiarity.

So not only do we long for miracles, but we want them to be so dramatic that they can’t be ignored. We want them to be quick, big, and complete—just like in the gospel today: ten dudes with leprosy, 100% healed on the spot. Or, in a more personal context: Dad’s cancer is all gone… Mom’s Alzheimer’s is better… I hit all the Lotto numbers and the check is in the mailbox; wait, I’m opening it as we speak. Bang! The miracle has occurred.

But actually, our Savior fills our daily lives with constant, quiet miracles. Flip a switch on the wall, and we have light. Put on glasses, and we see. Punch a few buttons on a phone, and we hear a friend. Or if you punch the buttons on an ATM, cash comes out. The fact that the medical world took centuries to defeat polio doesn’t make the victory any less of a miracle.

I was reading a commentary written by a biblical scholar and theologian. He wrote that a miracle doesn’t typically come by sitting around idly waiting for God to do it all. It comes from the cooperation of our faith-filled effort with God’s unlimited grace.

Sometimes our part is just noticing a need and praying—just like Father Thomas did with his kidney stone or the lepers asking Jesus for pity. Sometimes our part is simply opening up our senses to what God is doing around us. If the leper hadn’t looked at his body and his companions’, how would he have known that Jesus had cleansed them?

It’s kind of interesting. Jesus told the lepers to go show themselves to the priests so they could be declared clean. They’ve all been healed. They’re all free to go their own way. But one is turning back to seek out Jesus and to thank and praise God.

Ah, here’s another miracle: this man is truly healed, because now he wants to begin to relate to God rather than just hurry off to seek pronouncement from the priests. Not only has his body been healed, but his eyes have been opened to the source of the awesome blessing he has received. Maybe we can say that his miracle has been magnified—tripled, actually.

All of us are created in body, mind and spirit. Likewise, any healing takes place not only in the body, but also in the mind and spirit. The leper’s body was fixed… he realized it in his mind… and as a result, he now sought the spiritual connection with God.

It’s the same with us. The direction my life takes is far different if I don’t relate to God when my body is healed or if some other bit of good fortune takes place in my physical world. I can choose to go my way, or I can choose to go God’s way. Of course, with our free will—another miracle in itself—it’s up to us to decide.

Think about the leper who turned back toward Jesus. Imagine yourself turning back from your own plans for today or Monday morning. Take a moment to thank God and give praise for the many blessings you have experienced at all levels—body, mind and spirit—as you start off today’s journey toward a deeper relationship with God. I think you’ll find that it is truly miraculous.

Faith

Vincent Van Gogh, Mulberry Tree, 1889.

The 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

In Luke’s gospel today, Jesus talks about faith. He tells the apostles that if they had faith no bigger than the size of a mustard seed—the tiniest of all seeds—they could order a mulberry tree—which, by the way, can grow to 80 feet tall—to uproot itself and be replanted in the sea. Matthew’s more familiar version of the story says that we could move a mountain if we just had this same speck of faith.

Lots of times, people conclude that what Jesus means is simply that we must have more faith. We might look at our own life and use this little bit of scripture to criticize our own lack of faith, or even someone else’s: God didn’t answer my prayers, because my faith wasn’t strong enough; God didn’t heal Joe’s illness, because his faith wasn’t great enough; Mary didn’t get the job she wanted, because her faith wasn’t enough...

But that interpretation can’t really be true. Think about a child who believed in Santa Claus. He figured that if he believed enough, he’d get what he wanted for Christmas. And every Christmas morning, his stocking would be filled! The only problem was, there was no man in a red suit living at the North Pole… and eventually this kid found that out. Maybe for a time he pretended to believe, and his parents kept filling his stocking… but we can’t fake our belief in Santa forever.

Exactly the same way, we can’t go on forever “faking” our faith in God. For a while, we might come to church, pray, or do other religious things… but unless our faith and our belief are genuine, we’ll eventually get tired of playing the game.

Now, Jesus never commands us, or even calls us, to do something that’s impossible. So when he says we should have faith, he doesn’t mean for us to fake it or just engage in seriously wishful thinking. No, faith is real… or at the very least, it can be. And it not something that comes in various quantities. There’s no “trial size” or a Sam’s Club super-economy size. Like an on-and-off switch, it’s either there or it isn’t… so a “mustard seed’s worth” of faith is plenty—all you need—if it’s real.

Real faith will not fill the Christmas stocking of a poor child, but it might lead us to do so, because caring for children is something we can do. Faith may not help us to move a literal mountain into the sea, but it certainly can strengthen us enough to remove the rubble of a collapsed building to find survivors or bodies; just think of the World Trade Center, or New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, or the tsunami tragedy in southeast Asia.

The “unprofitable servant” imagery in the gospel passage might put us off a little, but the point is, we can do what God calls us to do. Saying that we don’t have enough faith is an excuse. It’s just a cheap attempt to put the blame on God.

Like the disciples, we probably can’t cast out demons or even rid the world of terrorists, as much as we might like to. We can’t save souls either. Only God can do that.

But what we can do is love one another… care for each other… help folks in their needs… and even forgive each other’s trespasses against us. If we couldn’t do these things, Jesus wouldn’t have commanded it of us.

So actually, even if we have a too-small heart like the Grinch’s, we still have faith that is sufficient. It’s our willingness that may not be.

I remember many occasions as a snotty, bratty kid, that I would refuse to do something to my parent’s consternation and exasperation: I wouldn’t try some food, or I wouldn’t be willing to play some game or sport, or I wouldn’t step out of my very sheltered comfort zone to take any sort of risk. Finally, after considerable pleading, I might give in… and guess what? I found that I actually enjoyed the experience! Faith often works like that, too. You might think you don’t have any—or not enough—but if you simply acted as though you did, you might be very surprised at the outcome… at the good you could accomplish!

If there’s an important lesson here, it might be that our own inertia or fear may be the biggest obstacle to finding our faith and putting it into action. The servant in the gospel knew he had a job: to serve the master. It didn’t matter whether he was hungry or tired or didn’t particularly feel like it that day. It was his job and his duty to perform. If we regarded our faith like our life’s responsibility, we would definitely be moving in the right direction… the direction our Lord is pointing out to us.

Let’s begin today by praying for ourselves and each other that the mustard seed of faith inside all of us will be energized and set free and put into practice, starting right here and now. I’ll be on the lookout for flying mulberry trees.