What do we mean by praying constantly? Great saints have told us that there is a distinction but still a unity between prayers and prayerfulness. Because we live in time, we need to dedicate certain times, in our daily routine, to say prayers. We are not angels, so we need to memorize certain formulas for praying. We use psalms and hymns and memorize prayers. In times of distress, we fall back on humble mumblings: reciting the rosary, or in deep anguish, just moving the beads. Yet, the Holy Spirit speaks within us in our weakness. We are not angels. We are sinners on a journey to perfection, which we have not yet reached. We are earthbound, and humility is the core of any genuine prayer we make.
Prayerfulness is an ongoing receptivity to the active presence of the divine life in which we live and move and have our being. In the dimension of prayerfulness, we evaluate and appreciate all that happens in our lives. In every moment and every matter, Christians should be ready to turn to Jesus, our Heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit to guide and counsel us.
At its most elementary level, prayerfulness is an on-going conversation with God. A loving two-way conversation in which we are humble but insistent in asking, and humble and attentive in listening. This kind of prayerfulness is hard to maintain because our imaginations have been secularized. It’s too easy for Christian attentiveness to be distracted and tainted by other loud voices. Christian prayerfulness can evaporate unless we protect it with the structure of saying prayers.
A little prayer is an enormous act of faith. Jesus ends today’s gospel by asking whether the Son of Man will find any faith when He returns. Every little prayer of petition is an act of recognizing the Providence of God. Grace and comfort come as we place our trust in God.
We need to be constant in the life of prayerfulness, just like Moses in the first reading. In the little prayers we offer for others, there is not just faith but also charity. We grow in mercy – as the wicked judge in the Gospel did not – as we unite ourselves into the flow of mercy to others. True prayerfulness is a charity that comes to perfection.
There must have been dimensions in the character of the Samaritan leper which the other nine did not have. The Samaritan leper experienced a deep encounter with Jesus. A real contact of soul to soul, person to person. Jesus acted, moved, and spoke with great freedom. It is the absence of freedom which makes personal relationships difficult. This event was characterized by freely given goodness. Our Lord did not instantly heal the ten lepers. The healing came as they went along. They all had the faith to take Jesus’ instructions seriously, so they went to the priests in the temple. (The priests had authority over all matters of purity and impurity). Leprosy was and is extremely contagious. That contagion made the afflicted unfit to take part in collective worship. The priests, rather than a doctor, were designated to declare a person pure from leprosy. Restoration of a healthy state was an expression of divine mercy. The cured Samaritan leper needed to express his gratitude before he got any official confirmation. First, he raised his voice in praise. He went back to the place where he had left Jesus. His soul was stirred, and he needed to express his relief. The weight of leprosy had been lifted. Next, he threw himself on the ground before Jesus as an expression of worship. He had detected a divine power at work in his healing. The leper’s separation from human community had ended. Where there is a society brought into being by charity, and characterized by the practice of charity, the possibility for a higher standard of human living is so much greater. There is compassion for affliction of every kind. This incident was not a situation where a right to help could be claimed. This leper knew it was an expression of free goodness. The soul knows instinctively when it is being regarded as a “case” or a duty. This was an expression of human sympathy, a shared humanity. When charity comes to birth in a society, its social living is marked by a solidarity of compassion. It is evident that its members know that God is love. A true Christian society treasures the belief in the primacy of selfless love, a belief in which there can be no fear and no doubt. The one leper saw and believed. Fr. Hernan Cely Pastor
The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’ Their request seems to come from nowhere. Although Jesus chose twelve and named them apostles, we don’t hear the term apostles that much in Luke. He says the twelve more often, and most often He uses the term disciples. He calls them apostles when they return from their missionary journey, when they are at the table for the Last Supper, and when the women bring news of the empty tomb. So, the use of the word apostles must be significant here. The word faith is another word used infrequently by Luke. It seems to describe a disposition. Whether it is the men who lower the paralytic through the roof, or the centurion who relies on the word of Jesus because he knows he is unworthy to be under the same roof, or the woman who simply touches the hem of His garment, it is that kind of faith that Jesus sees and responds to. It is Faith that is lived daily and shapes the way a person thinks and behaves. It is about receptivity to God’s presence in our daily lives, and it is seen in our consistently faithful behavior. It is not reserved for emergencies. At this stage in their relationship with Jesus, the apostles are beginning to see their limitations for the work ahead. The apostles recognize their need for a deeper and stronger faith. And they ask for an increase. When Jesus discusses the role of the servant in regard to his Master, the point is that one cannot expect a reward if he is only doing his duty. In the social contract of the time, the Master does not owe the slave anything for his obedience. The apostle does not just obey; he asks for more faith to serve more fully. Obedience is not a means to some reward. It is simply what being a disciple is about. We do not expect a reward for our work as disciples, but the faith the apostles handed on to us promises much. Apostles know that it is the power of faith that can hurl mulberry trees into the sea and keep them thriving. Apostles beg for more and more faith, so they can serve more.
Karl Marx is known for stating that religion is the opium of the people. According to this idea, religion creates a world where we ignore sufferings and dream of an imaginary paradise after death. Marx believed that religion promotes a narcotic-like slumber. The Gospel, with its parable of the damnation of the rich man, illustrates the consequence of ignoring suffering. During his earthly life, the rich man failed to see Lazarus. Perhaps, he even averted his eyes, choosing not to allow them to linger over the disturbing image of an ulcerated man being licked by dogs. He did nothing to help Lazarus. He did not see him as his brother. The end of the parable inverts the situation. The rich man, learning the error of his ways, wants to wake up his brothers. He wants them to see reality, so they don’t experience the same consequence. He believes that they could not fail to repent if Lazarus came back from the dead to warn them. The words Jesus attributes to Abraham they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead are bluntly realistic. For clearheaded people who see and care for others, resurrection is more than an inert fact. It has an explosive effect. It brings us to share in the love of God, enables us to see our neighbors more clearly, and empowers us to love more deeply. The power of the Resurrection, flowing to us through the sacraments, changes us, gives us the eyes to see reality for what it is. It is this power that pulls down the great chasm that lies between God and us, between us and our neighbors. It closes the gap that separates us from the reality of the suffering and sorrows of our fellow humans. Marx was right, if we put the word “religion” in quotation marks. Corrupt religion has an anesthetic effect. Like the sensuous elite in the first reading from Amos, false, material gods lull us into illusionary security. There’s an antidote to opium. It’s called Narcan. With its use, the one who has overdosed wakes up with a jolt. Christianity is more like Narcan than opium. The Eucharist is our weekly shot. By its power, we are awakened to live more fully in reality, to see its resplendent beauty without denying the darkness caused by sin. The Eucharist is the antidote to sinful illusions. Fr. Hernan Cely Pastor
No servant can serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and money. This is one of the betterknown quotes of the Bible. God and money do not go together. Jesus is not saying If you like money, if you have money, if you use money, God will be angry and hate you. Perhaps, instead of emphasizing how wicked it is to be a slave to Mammon, we should begin with the joys of being a slave to God. If no servant can have two masters, it is equally true that no servant can have no master. In inviting us to free ourselves from slavery to Mammon, Christ urges us to enslave ourselves to God. God and Mammon are not, in fact, opposites. We do not believe that the material goods of the world are wicked. Mammon is not an anti-God. God created material goods, and they are good. God created everything and saw that it was very good. God so loved this created world that He took flesh, entering into our world of flesh and blood and bread and oil and wine and water and…. God invites us to participate in His work of creation, not as Adam did with toil and tears, but with joy and laughter and singing. The created world is not overthrown, evaporating into nothingness, but transformed and redeemed. And money is an important part of this. Its purpose is the allocation of goods, not of bads. Our ability to devise an economic system, to reason out the right way to allocate resources, is a sign of how God confides in us, allows us to participate in His Providence. It is not a case of God is good, and money is bad; in fact, not even of money is good, but God is better. Rather, money is good, and God is the source of that goodness, the meaning and perfection of all goodness. God is not competing with Mammon. Yet, money is tainted. Not in itself, but because of what we human beings have made of our good, created world. We have made a world in which people can so easily become enslaved to greed. Those who have become enslaved to money have failed to put it to the good work for which it is intended. Mammon is unrighteous because we have made it so.
The Cross is the most widely recognized symbol of Christianity. On the 14th of September each year, we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Previously, there were two feasts of the Holy Cross in the liturgical year: the Finding of the Cross on May 3rd and the Exaltation on September 14th. They commemorated respectively the discovery of the Cross in Jerusalem in the 4th century by St. Helena and the recovery of the Cross by Emperor Heraclius in 649AD, after it had been captured by the Persians. Now the liturgical calendar has combined them into one. The Cross is central to Catholic faith. What does it mean for us? What moment in history does it bring before us? It was a moment (one of many) when the religious and secular powers – in this case Jewish and Roman – combined to condemn and execute an innocent man. As far as the powers were concerned, it was routine. Here was another religious and political fanatic who threatened the stability of society and must be dealt with. They had to do their job quickly because the Passover was imminent. They had no time to consider the case, even if they had wanted to. The executioners could not possibly understand what they were doing. They did what they did from a mixture of motives which are typical of fallen human beings. In the minds of His judges and executioners, the crucifixion of Jesus was a moral muddle, with all the confusion, uncertainty, and twinges of conscience that we all experience. But what was the meaning of the Cross in Jesus’ mind? It was the full and final expression of the love of God for His people and for His creation. He was born to be God with us, and He died as God with us. No matter how we treat Him, no matter what we do. The life and death of Jesus is one of total faithfulness. It is the sacrificial offering of a human life lived with perfect love and selfgiving. The Cross is the conclusion of a life that is both fully human and totally divine. In the crucifixion, we see the depths of sin and degradation and the heights of God’s forgiveness, love, and power. Standing for both life and death, the crucifixion displays God’s forgiving love, which can never be halted by our rebellion. Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaims!
The opening of today’s Gospel is harsh! It sounds a bit much, if not entirely wrong. Jesus says we must hate our father, our mother, our spouse, our children, sisters and brothers, even our own lives in order to follow Him. What Jesus is doing is nudging us towards a glimpse of the fundamental change required in us to become sons and daughters of God. We seek self-improvement: we want to change for the better. Even those who seem content with themselves will realize that part of their contentment is to recognize the need to grow. What the gospel suggests is that we have set our goals at a limited distance or in a mistaken direction. We underestimate the magnitude of the change and transformation required and possible. There are examples throughout history where we are promised that structural changes in society will solve all our problems. Bring on the revolution! And, of course, we find that very little changes. Revolutions are unlikely to change much unless they are accompanied by revolutionary change in the hearts of the people. The people in the gospel are following Jesus, but not for the right reasons. They do not know where He is going: His crucifixion and ultimate return to the Father. They are looking for change but do not appreciate that following Jesus entails the ultimate change of finding their way to God. They are looking for security in this life. They and we are the hungry, who want to be fed; the sick, who want to be healed; and the poor, who want to be rich. They and we follow Him enthusiastically, full of hope, looking for the good things in this life. As followers of Jesus, we want an improved old life. He challenges us. He wants to know if we really know where He is going and what the cost of the journey will be. He is not offering an improvement in the old order. He wants to give us a different life. We cannot desire the good only for ourselves, our lives, our families, and our possessions. Jesus is asking us to think in terms of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is thinking of humanity as God’s family on its way to a final outcome. Jesus is asking us to give up the things which distract us from God. This can even include family.