Reflection on Mass readings for July 27 (17th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
As far as I can remember, the first time in my life in which I really started to take prayer seriously was my first year of college. At least in those first months, it wasn’t a particularly deep sort of prayer by any means.
If you were to somehow project a transcript of my interior conversation with the Lord, you might have easily mistaken it for my to-do list, since almost all my time and mental energy in prayer typically went toward asking Divine Providence to help me in my upcoming tasks, school projects, and the occasional relationship issue.
In retrospect, that wasn’t entirely a bad thing; I had a lot of real and honest concerns, and my prayer was an honest – if simplistic – series of pleas that God would take pity on me and all the homework on which I had procrastinated.
On the other hand, it made for a homogenous and unbalanced sort of prayer routine – one in which I spent vastly more time talking at God rather than with him. It was only after I started seriously discerning a vocation to the priesthood that other dimensions of prayer began to develop, and my interior monologue shifted more toward a proper spiritual dialogue.
Even, now, however, petitionary and intercessory prayer remain an important part of my life and relationship with the Lord, just as it does in the life of every Christian.
This week’s readings make it clear that this kind of prayer is indeed one of the most fundamental and instinctive ways by which we communicate with God and ask him to supply for both our spiritual and concrete needs.
The first reading from Genesis, in particular, is a heart-wrenching account of the patriarch Abraham’s intercession for the people of Sodom, offering progressively more insistent prayers that the Lord would withhold the punishment he had promised to inflict on their city.
To give this passage a bit of context, we should remember that Abraham’s intentions were very personal, as Sodom was the very city in which his nephew, Lot, had chosen to live, despite the notorious sinfulness of that land’s inhabitants.
Many of us might recognize a painful spiritual parallel here in our own prayers for the conversion of family members and friends who have chosen to live in places and situations contrary to the teachings of our faith, or which place them in occasions of grave temptation and spiritual peril.
Like Abraham, it might be that all we can do is pray, imploring the Lord to intervene, break through, and lead our loved ones to safety and salvation. In all honesty, this is a challenging kind of prayer, one which can even be discouraging when we don’t see outward signs of change or improvement.
Jesus’ words to us in the Gospel, however, serve as a beautiful counterpoint. His message is simple and direct: The Lord loves us, he will provide for us, and so we should never cease asking him for whatever it is that we need, especially in our intercession for others.
Are our prayers often simplistic in our greatest moments of need? Yes, they are simple like the prayers of a child, and it is in childlike faith that we find the path opened to deeper intimacy with the heart of Christ.
Like Jesus himself, we should never be afraid to keep showing up to intercede for the intentions dearest to our hearts and the people whose souls we value most. In some instances, we may not even see the direct fruits of these prayers in our lifetime.
Whether it is in this life or the next, however, God promises that no petition or intercession offered will be in vain, and with trust and persistence, we will come to see firsthand that he is who he has revealed himself to be: Our Father in heaven, in whom we find all we could ever need.
Father Cassidy Stinson is the pastor of St. Jude, Radford; chaplain of Radford University Catholic Campus Ministry; and a member of the Institute of Jesus Priest, a secular institute founded by Blessed James Alberione.