Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

50 years ago, on July 20, 600 million people world-wide watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.   It was a remarkable moment of national confidence and national unity: two attributes American politics desperately needs today.

Is anyone celebrating a wedding anniversary this week?  I met a couple married fifty-some years and asked, “What’s the secret to such a marriage?” The wife answered, “Each week, we go to a restaurant for a delicious meal, fine wine, a little dancing, and then a slow walk back home.” She added, “He goes on Tuesdays. I go Fridays.”

Which reminds me, while out sipping wine with a friend, I noticed whenever he put the glass to his mouth, he would close his eyes. I finally asked, “Why do you do that?” He replied that the last time he had a medical checkup, the doctor told him never to look at a drink again.

The word of God takes us back over thirty-five hundred years to an ancient biblical legend about hospitality.  Here Abraham, a man of extraordinary faith in God's unconditional love for him, sees three strangers traveling out of the desert. He treats them like family and serves them warm bread, choice meats and fresh milk. Abraham and Sarah welcomed these strangers as though they were welcoming God.

The word invites us to be hospitable to everyone who enters into our daily lives.

Paul, in his letter to the Christian community at Colossae (Turkey today), refers to the redemptive power of suffering. A modern-day author wrote that there are three inescapables in life: suffering, guilt, and death.

Suffering, from a Christian point of view, is ultimately a mystery. There’s no satisfactory answer to this age-old reality. I think of the Yemen and Ukraine civil wars, the Syrian war, the refugee crises in so many parts of the world. The victims may be asking God, why? Yet somehow we believe that inescapable suffering, accepted in faith, can be redemptive. Why? Because Jesus, through his suffering, death, and resurrection, reestablished for us a right relationship with God.

Paul, who suffered much in his missionary journeys, invites us to ask God for the grace to unite our own inescapable sufferings to the redemptive sufferings of Jesus through whom we have eternal life. Why? So that these inescapable sufferings, like that of Jesus, can be redemptive for ourselves and for others.

In the Gospel according to Luke, we have the story of Martha and Mary. How many are sympathetic to Martha? Martha and Mary can symbolize the dual dimensions within each one of us: serving and praying. We have to be a combination: listening to the word of God in prayer, on the one hand, and doing good for others, on the other. 

Often, we fret or worry. We’re busy shopping, chauffeuring, doing chores, working long hours. We often forget the one necessity: our relationship with God. And so we might ask ourselves: do we have our priorities straight?  Mary had her priorities straight.

Some of you may have read Rick Warren’s popular book The Purpose-Driven Life. Life isn’t simply a matter of acquiring and spending. Our ultimate purpose is to live in a right relationship with God and one another forever—here and in life after death.

The Martha in us challenges us to actively reach out to others with a helping hand. Become involved, for example, in some volunteer service in the community.

And the Mary dimension challenges us to pray. Wendy Beckett, a British religious sister and art historian, known for her popular BBC art history documentaries, once asked, “What do we really want when we pray? Do we want God to possess us?” Isn't that the whole purpose of life?  To belong to God; to let God seize hold of our own nothingness. Sister Wendy maintained that's all prayer is.

There are so many different ways to pray, to bring to consciousness the awesome presence of God in our lives: familiar prayers like the Our Father or the Rosary, prayers of praise like the psalms, slowly meditating on a biblical text, petitioning God for a favor, sitting quietly and feeling God’s presence within us (through, for example, a mantra), actively participating in Sunday liturgies.

Almost anything can be a pathway into the awesome presence of God. But there is one common denominator: prayer lifts our minds and hearts up to God. Prayer is our longing for God and God’s longing for us.  Prayer is all about our personal relationship or friendship with God.

Begin every day by spending at least ten to fifteen minutes in prayer, in the presence of God. People find different ways to tune into God’s presence as they go about their daily routine. Yes, take time to slow down and tune into the presence of God. And on the weekend, gather with our community to celebrate the liturgy, the mass, the source and summit of the Christian life.

So why don’t we pray more often. One obstacle is our addiction to distractions, tuning into TVs, computers, smartphones, noise, noise everywhere. People create so much noise that they can no longer hear the voice of God in their lives. That was the point of C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. Finding time to pray simply depends on the importance we attach to connecting with God.

One thing I find helpful in prayer is a focus—a candle, a crucifix, a religious image—something tangible to bring me back to God if I’m distracted by a call to be made, a chore to be done.

Another obstacle is the question: what’s in it for me? What’s in prayer for us is that prayer will make us better human beings—better family members, better neighbors, better friends, better professionals, better everything.

Someone compared prayer to the daily discipline of a musical performer. If I miss practice one day, I am the only person who may notice. But I notice. If I miss practice for a week and then perform, a handful of people will be able to tell. But if I miss practice for a couple of weeks, almost everyone can tell. If we neglect prayer for two or three weeks, almost everyone around us will recognize that we are not at our best.

I love St. Teresa of Avila’s famous prayer advice:

Let nothing disturb you;
Let nothing frighten you;
All things are passing.
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Nothing is wanting to them who possess God.
God alone suffices.

Today's word of God invites us to reflect on praying and serving. At least fifteen minutes a day in the presence of God is a good start for deepening our relationship with God, a God who assures us, “do not be afraid, I am with you always.” Amen.