Do you hear us? The Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Do you hear us? 

The Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

October 16, 2022

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Exodus 17:8-13; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8

 

          The parable of the unjust judge and the persistent victim teaches us about the necessity of always asking for what we want and need, especially if the cases seem to be without resolution or when we are desperate to be heard. What we ask for in prayer changes us, and it helps us to clarify at our very depths what we need. Just asking the question is the right answer.

 

          I think of the parents of an adult child whose son or daughter is in the grips of a deadly opioid addiction. The parents have tried every approach to get their child to want to get into treatment and to participate in one’s own recovery. Nothing has worked, and all avenues appear exhausted, and the parents have spent sleepless nights continuously in order to say the right word or phrase to rouse their child to self-care and responsible choices. One unanswered prayer after another exhausts the family to the point of breaking. The parents cannot give up, and they hold onto their extreme powerlessness, and they keep trying. It is not a question of saying the right words to please God or bargaining with God because that will not change the course of action. God does not intervene in those ways and God does not rejoice in the suffering of victims or by illness. God abides and accompanies. 

 

          Why then do we pray? Does God answer our prayers? These are serious questions that demand a mature answer. We do have to ask for what we want and need because prayer is done when we are at the limits of our love, at the limits of our humanity and we recognize our radical dependence upon God, whether we like it or not.

          

          As we are hearing about the results of the synod listening sessions, the church is getting a glimpse of what the people want. They are longing for communion and participation in the church because they are not experiencing it now. The reports suggest that the laity is waking from its slumber and desires to draw closer to God and each other through a deeper knowledge of Scripture, prayer, and the sacraments. They spoke on what pleases and displeases them with liturgy, and sought warmer hospitality, greater efforts to heal, and more invigorating preaching by clergy. Mostly, people sought a more welcoming Church with less clericalism where all members of the People of God can find accompaniment on the journey. People want the church to be a home for the wounded and broken, where others walk with them rather than judging them, and to build real relationships through care and authenticity, not superiority. People are seeking meaningful relationships that bring an end to loneliness in the midst of suffering. 

 

          What do we want? We want to know that God exists and cares for us, and that we get that care through God’s church. We know that many of our prayers cannot be answered the way we would like, and yet we pray to a God who accompanies us and dwells within us. We reveal what is in the depths of our soul to a God who we believe in the core of our being knows us, lives within us, and desires to step with us along the arduous, sometimes lonely way. We want God to walk by our side, and knowing that is sometimes the best answer we can get for this God never forgets or ceases to love what God has created. God cannot cease to love us. God can only love.

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

 

First Reading: 

 

Monday: (Ephesians 2) You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you once lived following the age of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient.

 

Tuesday: (2 Timothy 4) At my first defense no one appeared on my behalf, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the proclamation might be completed and all the Gentiles might hear it.

 

Wednesday: (Ephesians 3) To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for all what is the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God who created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church to the principalities and authorities in the heavens.

 

Thursday: (Ephesians 3) I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love.

 

Friday (Ephesians 4) I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit
through the bond of peace.

 

Saturday (Ephesians 4) Grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore, it says: He ascended on high and took prisoners captive; he gave gifts to all.

 

Gospel: 

 

Monday: (Luke 12) “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

 

Tuesday: (Luke 10) The Lord Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.

 

Wednesday (Luke 12) Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.

 

Thursday (Luke 12) I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!

 

Friday (Luke 12) When you see a cloud rising in the west you say immediately that it is going to rain–and so it does; and when you notice that the wind is blowing from the south you say that it is going to be hot–and so it is. You hypocrites!

 

Saturday (Luke 13) Some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means!

 

Saints of the Week

 

October 16: Hedwig, religious, at age 12 married Henry, a prince who would become king of Silesia. As a monarch, they built a Cistercian monastery for women. They soon built many other religious houses and hospitals. She chose to live in austere poverty to be in solidarity with the poor.

 

October 16: Margaret Mary Alocoque entered the Visitation Order at Paray-le-Monial in 1671. She received visions of Christ's love and told her Jesuit spiritual director, Claude la Colombiere, who asked her to write about her experiences. They developed the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Her community resisted her promotion of the devotion at first, but later came to see the power of the prayers.

 

October 17: Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr (d. 107) was born around 33 A.D. and became a leading figure in the new church at Antioch. He served as bishop for 38 years before he was persecuted and killed under Emperor Trajan for being a Christian leader. He wrote seven letters about church life in the early second century and is the first-mentioned martyr of Roman heroes in the first Eucharistic Prayer.

 

October 18: Luke, evangelist (first century) was the author of his version of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. He is described as a doctor and a friend of Paul. He was a well-educated Gentile who was familiar with the Jewish scriptures and he wrote to other Gentiles who were coming into a faith.

 

October 19: North American Jesuit martyrs: Isaac Jogues, John de Brebeuf, priests, and companions (17th century) were killed between 1642 and 1649 in Canada and the United States. Though they knew of harsh conditions among the warring Huron and Mohawk tribes in the New World, these priests and laymen persisted in evangelizing until they were captured, brutally tortured, and barbarically killed. 

 

October 20: Paul of the Cross, priest (1694-1775), founded the Passionists in 1747. He had a boyhood call that propelled him into a life of austerity and prayer. After receiving several visions, he began to preach missions throughout Italy that mostly focused upon the Passion of the Lord. After his death, a congregation for nuns was begun. 

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• October 16, 1873: About two weeks after Victor Emmanuel's visit to Berlin, where he had long conferences with Bismark, rumors reached the Society in Rome that all of their houses in Rome were threatened. 
• October 17, 1578: St Robert Bellarmine entered the Jesuit novitiate of San Andrea in Rome at the age of 16. 
• October 18, 1553: A theological course was opened in our college in Lisbon; 400 students were at once enrolled. 
• October 19, 1588: At Munster, in Westphalia, the Society opens a college, in spite of an outcry raised locally by some of the Protestants. 
• October 20, 1763: In a pastoral letter read in all his churches, the Archbishop of Paris expressed his bitter regret at the suppression of the Society in France. He described it as a veritable calamity for his country. 
• October 21, 1568: Fr. Robert Parsons was elected Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He resigned his Fellowship in 1574. 
• October 22, 1870: In France, Garibaldi and his men drove the Jesuits from the Colleges of Dole and Mont Roland.