The necessity of praying always without becoming weary.
I have a bad habit that when I go traveling,
I pack at the last minute.
It works for me to an extent because when I pack at the last minute,
it only takes a couple of minutes to do as that is all I have time for.
The disadvantage is that I over-pack every time.
I pack for every possibility and take too many options.
Then I squeeze everything into that bag.
I roll up all my shirts and pants squeezing all the air out
and jamming them into the suitcase with no room for anything.
Whether it is rain or snow or sunshine
I have one for everything
because I don’t have time to check the weather.
Always my suitcase is jammed packed full even for a 2-day trip!
Ron Rolheiser, the great Catholic theologian and priest
says our lives are a bit like that, packing a suitcase,
we have it full with every possibility of our lives;
we have squeezed in everything into the suitcase of our life.
But there is no room or very little room for God.
We want to drink from the faucet of life;
we want to keep all our options open;
we want to keep everything in there.
We watch not one game; we watch all the games.
We’ve got not one sport; we have several sports.
We have our DVR full of all the different shows
from all the different channels.
We are ready to binge watch whenever we get a chance.
We fill our lives with many different things.
We are busy about many things.
And most, if not all of them, are really good
but we have little or no more room for God.
For instance, kids playing sports;
not only one sport
but they are playing two or three sports;
or play in two clubs.
They are busy going from one place to the next
and parents must take them, so they become equally busy.
Making room for God, it’s oh no.
We don’t have time.
I understand that you are all here so I am speaking to the choir.
It’s Sunday morning, 9am and you are here.
You found the time to do this. It is wonderful.
And many more at home are sitting down watching.
And maybe it is because of COVID that you don’t come;
or maybe it has just kind of got comfortable having a cup of coffee
while having Mass online.
The temptation is the same;
we cannot squeeze anything more in!
I was talking to somebody last night and he says,
“Oh, I can’t come to Mass. That is my Pilates time.”
On Sunday morning? Yeah. Pilates is Sunday morning.
How about Sunday evening for Mass or Saturday for Mass?
Oh no. I have dinner going on.
We fill our lives with so much and they are all good.
But then we leave the leftovers for God!
If I think ahead of time about my packing
then I get better at it being a little more thoughtful about
what I really need for my trip.
If I’m going to the desert and the forecast,
then I probably don’t need my rain jacket.
I probably don’t need an extra sweater or two sweaters.
In our lives, if we think about our life a little more,
then we can leave room for prayer.
I don’t think we need to watch all the different sports.
We don’t need to watch every single last minute of the game.
There is a thing called fast forward. Right?
We can go fast forward through some of these games.
I get that we want to watch the different shows
but are they all really that important in life
that we can’t cut out one or two;
or can we spend a little less time on social media
so we can leave some time for God?
We are busy most of the time and most of it is good stuff
so we need to decide what to let go.
There are a lot of things that really keep us busy
but maybe we are over-stuffing the suitcase of our life unnecessarily.
We have to sit back and make a decision about what it is
that we take out of our suitcase of lives.
What Jesus is talking about here in today’s reading is the need to pray.
Jesus talks about not saying our prayers
but praying for justice with persistent.
Justice is always God’s will
and we must pray for our will to be aligned with God’s will.
That sort of prayer requires us to listen and not just say “prayers.”
Jesus is talking about sitting down and letting go.
Emptying our lives just a little bit and
learning to listen to what God has to say;
learning to pray without ceasing means
opening our lives to God’s will in our life.
In the letter to Timothy, he says:
“Be persistent when convenient or inconvenient.”
There is often a misunderstanding of that prayer
because we all think that the only prayer we have is petitionary prayer
where we are petitioning God for something.
And that is one prayer when we are asking God for something.
But let’s be honest, there are lots of things we ask God for
and we do not get.
We can be as persistent as we want
but we don’t get that request.
We have to be careful to understand what prayer is.
Prayer is not so much about changing God’s mind
as it is changing our mind about God.
It is not so much about changing God
as it is about changing us
and aligning our will to God’s will.
I don’t want to be Pollyannaish,
I know there are times when we have real prayers
that are powerful and needy;
petitionary prayers like when we are sick;
or when a loved one is sick or dying.
And we pray for them.
Those are good prayers.
Sometimes it appears that God does not give answer
to those prayers in our way.
We want them to be healed and
returned to full health and that doesn’t happen.
Prayer whether it be convenient or inconvenient means,
we pray that we have a mindset of allowing God to change us;
that even though we did not get an answer to that prayer
that God continues to change us and to ready us
for being of help to that loved one when they are sick
or if they die that we help them in their dying process.
That changes us; and it changes us
to hopefully be a better version of ourselves.
We must look at our lives and make room for God.
Throw out some of the garments of our lives if you would;
we don’t really need extra this or extra that.
And be ready to be changed in our prayer
to allow God to change us when we pray.
It’s great that we are all here.
It is important that we come to make room
on a Sunday for the Lord as a community.
But it cannot stop here.
We need to make room every single day for God and prayer.
We need to find a way to carve out 20 or 30 minutes each day
to just listen to God and to hear his voice;
to be ready for conversion of our lives;
for us to do God’s will in our life.
As we come to the table to receive strength and to be nourished,
let us also take a look at our incredibly busy lives
and see if we can take out a few garments;
take out a few things and make room for God;
and be persistent in our prayer.
Pray without ceasing but allow the Lord to change us;
to change us and to listen then to allow his Will to be our will.
The necessity of praying always without becoming weary.
