HOMILY WEEK 27 04 – Year II
Faith Expressed Through Prayer
(Ga 3:1-5; Lk 1:69-75; Lk 11:5-13)
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There is a saying, “Pray as if everything depended on God; work as if everything depended on you.”
That saying resonates with the readings today, inviting us to place our faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection, and to persevere in prayer.
St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, comes close to exasperation as he confronts the Galatians to live by faith rather than relying on their own efforts. Paul is very upset at the Galatians for slipping into semi-Pelagianism – thinking they could somehow earn their way into heaven, or feeling they had to do that, instead of humbly and graciously receiving the gift of eternal life as a transformative act of faith in Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
The responsorial canticle is actually the Benedictus prayed every morning in the Divine Office, from the gospel of Luke. God fulfilled his promise to send a savior to give us the knowledge and experience of salvation by saving us from our enemies. Those enemies are our painful emotions, negative attitudes and addictions, more powerful than we are, so we need a savior. As the Messiah, Jesus came to redeem and to sanctify, to forgive and to heal. Faith invites us to turn to him in prayer, to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
Holiness is a transformed way of being that is done unto us through humble repentant faith, more so than the result of any effort on our part. One way to express that is to say that salvation is more a matter of gratitude than grit, of receiving more than earning.
I have heard one older layman, in my youth, declare that one has to merit heaven, or earn it. Interestingly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about merit: “The merit of humans before God arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace” (#2008). “The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness. Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is our due … Our merits are God’s gifts” (#2009). “Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life” (#2010).
Admittedly, it is a fine balance between God’s grace and our response to that grace by cooperating with it. A slogan from the movement of A.A. is fitting here – we are to “Let go and let God.” This also connects with Step 11 of the same program: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, seeking only the knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”
This leads us to the gospel in which Jesus teaches two key things: Persistence in prayer, and to pray for the Holy Spirit, the greatest of gifts. When we pray in this way, for what God wants to give us anyway, the Holy Spirit, our prayer will always be answered, although often not in the ways we might expect them to be answered.
Someone who captures this attitude of faith expressed through prayer is Saint Pope John XXIII, who shared these sentiments during his moonlight speech on the eve of the beginning of the Vatican Council:
“Dear children, I hear your voices. Mine is only a single voice. But what resounds here is the voice of the whole world; here all the world is represented. One might even say that the moon rushed here this evening – look at her high up there – to behold this spectacle. This is how we close a great day of peace! Glory to God and peace to men and women of good will.
My own person counts for nothing – it is a brother who speaks to you, who has become a father by the will of the Lord … but everyone together, in paternity and fraternity, and the grace of God, everything, everything … Let us continue, therefore, to love each other, to love each other so by looking at each other in our encounters with one another: taking up what unites us and setting aside anything that might keep us in a bit of difficulty.
This morning there was a spectacle that not even the Basilica of St Peter’s – which has four centuries of history – could ever had contemplated. Let us honor the images of this evening That our feelings might always be just as they are now as we express them before heaven and before the earth. Faith, hope, charity, the love of God, the love of our brothers and sisters; and then everyone together helped by the holy peace of the Lord, in doing good works.
When you go back home, find your children; give them a hug and say, “This is a hug from the Pope. You will find some tears that need to be dried – speak a good word – the pope is with us, especially in times of sadness and bitterness. And then all together let us encourage one another singing, breathing, weeping, but always full of faith in Christ who helps us and who listens to us. Let us continue on our journey.”
The Eucharist is our greatest prayer, and a vigil we are to persistently celebrate until Jesus comes again. As Ron Rolheiser OMI wrote, the Eucharist is our one great act of fidelity. Two thousand years ago, Jesus took bread and wine, transformed them into his body and blood, and asked us to continue to do this in memory of him – and we have done so, for over two millennia, and are doing so today.
May our celebration deepen our faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and help us to persist in prayer to him and for the world.
