Great America's God Almighty Humbler

Listen to this weekend's homily!

Praise the Lord! The power of God is REAL! It's awesome! Let's go to the chapel and pray Psalm 34: "Glorify the Lord with me. Together, let us praise His Name! I sought the Lord and He answered me. From all my terrors, He saved me." We are redeemed sinners dependent upon God's mercy and love. Let us humble ourselves. Get on that ride, "The Humbler" and move from a place of exaltation to a place of humility. Now & Forever!

Heads Up! Hands Up!: 29th Sunday of ORD Time

Listen to this weekend's homily

Praise the Lord! We have a new call and response from our Psalm for the day. I'll say, "Our help is in the name of the Lord," and you respond, "Who made heaven and earth." Our help is indeed in the name of the Lord! It is in the name of the Lord that we find what we need not what we want! Prayer is an invitation to God's desire for us to receive His grace! But so very often, we seek help in other ways. Rather than discovering that our help is in the Name of the Lord, we look to other "names" for help, but all the time God is there for us yearning to answer our call of prayer. When have we put our hands up to God? When have we stretched our soul to Divinity, yearning to seek God's help in prayer and having confidence that God will answer? Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he is conducting for an opera singer? He has his hand in the air to hold the tone of the singer, he takes his hand out of his glove, files his finger nails all the while the glove is suspended in the air? So in my scholarly interpretation of the first reading from Exodus chapter 17, as I was prayerfully reflecting on God's holy Word, I thought of this image! Geez, what a powerful prayer life...distracted prayer life that is! There's Moses with his hand in the air, like Bugs with his buddies Aaron and Hur holding his hands in the air. When his hands are up in persistent prayer, the Israelites are winning. As soon as the hands go down, they are losing. Propped up on a rock with hands in the air, Moses remains faithful to God because He is confident in God's faithfulness to the Israelites. Or how about waiting in the parking lot as kid with your mom or dad talking forever with someone. You put your hands in the air hoping they recognize you and see your plight for them to stop. You reach up, hands up and head up yearning to be heard..."Please!? Can we go now?!" I was involved with NET Ministries and we would pray charismatically. It was my first experience of charismatic prayer. The image we were trained with for charismatic prayer was a young child reaching up to heaven in prayer to God, to Abba or pappa. Or further yet, how about the defensive position one is supposed to be in when playing zone defense in basketball. Hands up! Heads up! Be attentive!

Yet so often, our hands get tired, our arms get worn out! We put our hands down, we bow our head, and let down our arms. We aren't really feeling the "warm fuzzies" of prayer and we succumb to the temptation to give up. We are fatigued and simply lose our persistence so we say, "Why should I even bother praying...it isn't doing any good anyway." Yet this temptation to give up is an evil. We are called to be persistent. In our day age, consumerism is our God. We are constantly looking to receive something. We approach our God with the same mentality. saying, "God give me what I want!" We fail to approach God asking that His will be done, not ours! We should be saying, "God let me know what I really need." If we think that we can have a relationship with Jesus Christ without prayer and we just give up, we are gravely mistaken. Going to Mass on Sunday and religious ed on Wednesdays is not enough! We can not have a relationship with our Lord if we are not coming to Him in prayer. If we are not setting time aside everyday for prayer, we can not possibly know what God wants from us or possibly know what our true needs are! Personal prayer whereby we praise Him, ask Him, and listen to Him is essential for us to know Him!

Our Gospel reading from Luke...the widow, persistent in her prayer coming before the judge over and over again. Finally, it is her persistence that makes the judge answer. Jesus is telling us that even when we may not be seeing the results we want in prayer that we must never give up. We like that old widow must approach God with our heads up and our hands up seeking His will in our lives, "Your will be done, Lord! Not mine!" I lift my hands up, to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from you! Maker of heaven. Creator of the world. O how I need you Lord, you are my only hope, you're my only friend. So I will wait for you. To come and rescue me. Come and bring me light." Are we confident that the Lord will bring us into the light even when we are facing darkness? Ask Mother Theresa that question because boy does she have an answer! In a recent article of Newsweek on Mother Theresa's recently published writings entitled, Come be my Light, the journalist says, "The book may act as an antidote to a cultural problem. The tendency in our spiritual life but also in our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on. And so to us the totality of love is what we feel. but to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity, and vulnerability. Mother Theresa wasn't feeling Christ's love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to Him, 'Your happiness is all I want." Wow! Up every morning with her hands held high reaching up to God calling to Him, "Abba...papa." Here are the words from Mother Theresa herself, "Lord, my God, who am I that you should forsake me? The child of your love--and now become as the most hated one--the one--you have trown away unwanted-unloved. I call, I cling. I want--and there is no one to answer--no one. Alone...where is my faith? Even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness and darkness. My God--I have no faith--I dare not utter the words and thoughts that crowd my heart--and make me suffer untold agony--so many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them--because of the blasphemy. If there be God--please forgive me--When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me--and yet the reality of the darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the call of the Sacred Heart?" No, Mother you did not!

We, however, would make the mistake if we gave up. If we stopped keeping our hands in the air. If we stopped approaching the Judge. Even in the midst of unsatisfying results in our prayer lives, we must persevere and never give up. Or maybe you aren't praying. Maybe you are the one sitting there in the pew saying to yourself, "Ya, Mass once in awhile is enough. That's enough prayer for me." No it is not! To love the Lord requires commitment, fidelity, and vulnerability. If these are not apart of our lives, Jesus is not a part of our lives. We can not compartmentalize Jesus. Either you are in relationship with Him or your not. Or maybe we've tried to pray and we just gave up saying, "What's the use." We must never say this. The devil won if we secede our position to raise our hands and hearts up to God. We will be the ones who get mowed down. Persistent prayer is the only defense we have to conquer the enemies of despair and giving up.

We lift our hands up to the Lord! We lift our arms up! Our help is in the name of the Lord...who made heaven and earth! Our help can come from no other source than from prayer and we can not kid ourselves. We must never give up. We are called to love and we can only love if we enter into a loving relationship with God. Our help is in the name of the Lord...who made heaven and earth! Now and forever!