17th Sunday Yr C (Gospel: Luke 11:1-13) Ask and it will be given to you

 

 

There is an American writer called Scott Hahn, who used to be a Presbyterian and very anti-Catholic, but through his own studies ended up converting and becoming a Catholic. He is a brilliant writer and teacher of the faith. His own conversion story called Rome Sweet Home, is well worth reading. He now writes and teaches as a Catholic theologian in Stubenville University. In one of his talks he mentions that he had arranged to have a public debate with a Muslim, about the differences between the two faiths. Before they had the debate he met the Muslim and he mentioned to him that he would be talking about the fact that Christians understand God as a loving Father who looks after his children. Before he was able to go any farther, he said that the other man got upset and said that it is not right to talk about God as a Father. He said God is master and that it was insulting to speak about him as Father. The Muslim ended up refusing to have the debate at all. Scott says that this really brought home to him the difference in the way we understand God. 

 

Jesus taught us to talk about and address God in a way that was scandalous for many people then and now. The Jews in Jesus’ time were scandalised that Jesus would talk about God as Father, especially the way Jesus used the word ‘Abba.’ Once when I was in Israel I remember hearing a boy address his dad as ‘Abba.’ It really brought home to me what it meant. The idea of addressing God as ‘daddy’ is still strange to us, and yet that’s what Jesus did.

 

Recently a deacon friend of mine told me that a Muslim friend of his was asking him about our Church and about the mass. The deacon was explaining to him that in each mass we believe that the bread and wine really and truly become the Body and Blood of Christ. The Muslim asked again, ‘You really believe that God become present in a piece of bread and wine?’ And my friend said ‘Yes.’ And the Muslim’s response was fascinating. He said, ‘And this is how they dress?!’

 

God is all-powerful and doesn’t need us in any way, yet God invites us to play a part in what happens in the world. He asks us to take part in his creation, especially by interceding for each other, by being responsible for our actions. That is the action of a good parent with their child. Any parent doesn’t need their children’s help, especially when the children are small, but they love to allow the children to take part in things, for the sheer joy of having them there and helping them to learn. God does the same with us, even though there is the risk of us making a mess of things, which we regularly do. God invites us to be part of his work on earth.

In the first reading it says that God went down to see if what He had heard about Sodom and Gomorrah was really true. That is saying that people should always be given a fair chance to have their side of the story heard. God doesn’t act by hearsay and neither should we.

 

It also says that God is a moral God, who will hold us accountable for our actions. The idea that God was a moral God was something completely new for that time. People believed that the gods did whatever they wanted, with no sense of right or wrong and no regard for people’s wellbeing. God is showing us that there is a universal moral law, which cannot be changed. A modern-day error, is that we can decide what is right or wrong. If enough people decide that something is acceptable, such as abortion, then it is acceptable. But God says no, what is wrong is wrong and doesn’t change, even if the majority of people decide that it is ok. In Isaiah it says, ‘Woe to those who call good evil and evil good’ (Is 5:20). Doing that is twisting God’s word, but we see it happening all the time in our society.

 

Then Abraham intercedes for the people of the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God is threatening to destroy and in the classic Middle-Eastern way, he bargains his way down to the best deal. Abraham actually challenges God and God allows him to. God showed him what He intended to do, so that Abraham would intercede for those people. He wanted Abraham to be involved. God also wants us to be involved in his world. He wants us to pray and intercede for the world around us. You are in exactly the right place God wants you to be and part of what God calls us to do is to pray for those around us. You may be the only one who is praying for those people. Take it seriously. We have been blessed with the gift of faith and that is part of what God asks us to do; to intercede for those around us.

 

People often ask, ‘Does God have a particular plan for me?’ The answer is yes, and part of that plan is to intercede for those around you. It is a real mission and an important one.

 

Think for a moment. What is the most important thing that we can pray for each day? The most important thing to pray for, is for those who will die today, that God may be merciful to them, so that they will go to heaven. In 1917 in Fatima, Our Lady gave the children a prayer and asked that it be added to the rosary at the end of each decade:

‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell.

Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are in most need of your mercy.’

The fact that the Church added this prayer to the rosary says a lot. It is saying that heaven and hell are real and people who reject God can go to hell, which is why it is so important that we pray for those around us.

 

Everyone around us who dies each day, goes somewhere; either to be with God forever in heaven, or to lose God forever because of how they have lived and what they have chosen. Many people probably won’t be able to come directly into God’s presence, because of sinfulness that they have not asked forgiveness for, or have not atoned for and so God allows them to go through a final purification, or purgation that we call purgatory. That is one of God’s gifts of mercy to us.

 

Sadly, many people reject the idea of purgatory. But think of it this way and this is an extreme example, but it makes the point. Suppose that the day before he died, Hitler realized all the evil he had done and repented and sincerely begged God for mercy. God has told us that He is infinitely just, but also infinitely merciful and that anyone who sincerely repents will experience his mercy. So does that mean that the next day when he died he would go straight to heaven? That would be a mockery of God’s justice. So where does he go? There must be some way for him to atone for what he has done. That is what we call purgatory.

 

Then comes the question that everyone asks: ‘Does God hear my prayers? And does God answer my prayers?’ From what Jesus says in this Gospel passage, God always hears and God always answers. If that is not true, then Jesus was lying. ‘Ask and you will receive… The one who asks always receives.’

 

Now the question comes up with most of us, ‘How come I’m always praying for certain intentions and they often aren’t answered?’ God sees a bigger picture than we do. God sees the whole picture. What we ask for is not always the wisest thing to ask for. If your five year old son asked for a chainsaw for his birthday, hopefully you wouldn’t give it to him. The child may think that you are really mean and never give him what he asks for, but you can see a bigger picture than he can, because you are older and wiser. God is the same with us. God always answers our prayers, otherwise Jesus is a liar, but He doesn’t always answer them in the way that we expect, or understand, or even recognise. That is where we have to believe and trust that God knows what He is doing and God is looking after us. God always hears us and God always answers us.

 

When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, He gives them the Our Father. Note, they didn’t ask him for ‘a prayer’, but how to pray. So the Our Father is not just a prayer, but it is teaching us how to pray.

 

The first half of the Our Father is acknowledging God, his holiness and that his will may be done. Only in the second half do we ask for our needs. So even if you only take that much away from the Our Father, remember to always start by praising and thanking God for all that we have before you ask for what you need. That’s why at the beginning of the mass each Sunday, we pray the Gloria. We praise and acknowledge God. It is only after listening to the readings that we ask for our own needs in the intercessions. This is how God teaches us to pray.

 

Perhaps the most unexpected thing of all is that Jesus teaches us to pray to the point of being annoying, the way a child will keep asking you for the same thing until you give in. This is how Jesus tells us to pray. Be persistent, until God gives in!

 

'Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you.'

 

14th Sunday, year C (Gospel: Luke 10:1-12, 17-20) The body is not meant for immorality

 

Marino Restrepo

There is a man named Marino Restrepo, who was born in 1950 in Columbia. His family owned a large coffee planation and were quite well off. Although he was brought up Catholic, he stopped practicing at the age of fourteen. During his teens in the 60s he met up with two different American girls from California, who introduced him to the idea of ‘free love’, helping him to be sexually ‘liberated’ and to drugs. He eventually married the second girl when she became pregnant. They moved to Germany and later to the US. He became a successful producer, actor and songwriter, in Hollywood. Gradually he got into all kinds of New Age and pagan practice and an increasingly hedonistic lifestyle, a life of pleasure and drugs. Being promiscuous, sleeping around, was just part of his life-style and he said that this was the world of Hollywood.

 

In December 1997, at the age of 47, he visited his home in Colombia for Christmas. His sisters were going to mass and they invited him to come along, which he did, even though he hadn’t been in a Catholic church for 33 years. During the homily the priest was talking about devotion to the Infant Jesus and about a novena of prayer to the Infant Jesus which began on December 16^th and concluded on Christmas Eve. The priest said that anyone who prayed this novena with faith would receive a special grace. Marino asked one of his sisters if this was true and she said yes. So he decided to ask for a special grace, but out of pure greed, not devotion. He prayed that the Infant Jesus would change his life and that he would be able to retire with great wealth to an Indonesian island he had seen pictures of, with at least three women. God did change his life, but not in the way he was expecting.

 

After partying with his family, he left to visit one of his uncles. When he got to his uncle’s house he found the gates locked, which was unusual. Just then he was surrounded by armed, masked men. He was kidnapped and after a couple of days found himself deep in one of the jungles not far from where he grew up. He had been kidnapped by FARC rebels, who were hoping to get ransom money from his family.

 

He spent the following six months bound, with a cover over his face, lying in a cave. He almost died from malnutrition and the psychological torture that he was put through. His kidnappers were not able to get the money they had hoped for from his family and he was sure they were going to kill him.

 

FARC Rebels

One night during this ordeal, he had a spiritual experience which lasted about eight hours. He was given an illumination of conscience, where God showed him his whole life up to that point and how far he had separated himself from God. God allowed him to see the state of his soul before God. He was able to see the exact moment when he rejected God during his teens and began to live a sinful life. In the world’s eyes he was becoming liberated and very successful in his career, even though he was living a more and more sinful life. God showed him that if he had died at that time, he would have gone to hell, because of his total rejection of God by the way he was living. He had been living in mortal sin for thirty-three years. As you can imagine this experience brought about his conversion.

 

After six months in captivity he was unexpectedly released and reunited with his family. He was so traumatized that he wasn’t able to be with people in public for quite some time. Finally, after a time of readjustment, he went to confession and poured his heart out. After that, he gave up his career in Hollywood and has spent the last 27 years of his life travelling around the world giving his testimony.

 

During his illumination of conscience God also revealed to him in great depth, the nature and seriousness of sin, which he wrote about in a book called From Darkness into the Light. One thing that God showed him was especially how damaging sexual sin is. The ‘free-love’ movement of the sixties, which seemed to be progress and liberation in the eyes of our world, was in fact demonic, as it began to lead more and more people into serious sin and farther from God. What was once considered sinful, sleeping with someone outside of marriage—that is, fornication—gradually came to be seen as normal. Sin was normalized. But God showed him that sexual intimacy is only meant for marriage, something that would be considered old-fashioned today.

 

God made marriage a sacred bond between a man and a woman, which is meant to support them both and give them the security for new life in the right environment. When a child is conceived outside of marriage, it is usually seen as a problem. When a child is conceived within marriage it is usually seen as a gift. Marriage provides the right loving environment into which children can enter the world. The sacrament of marriage also has God’s blessing and grace, to help the couple. I know it does not always work out this way, but this is God’s plan for us.

 

Artificial contraception also encouraged fornication, which in turn leads to more and more abortion. I have no doubt that abortion is probably one of, if not the greatest sin against God, because it is the destruction of life which comes from God, at its very beginning. If sexual relations were kept within marriage, abortion would drop drastically, as would sexually transmitted diseases. God in his wisdom knows what works and keeps showing us what works, but we must listen.

 

The first step to ending abortion is to help our young people to understand that it is not ok to sleep around before they are married; that it is in fact a serious sin in God’s eyes and every time it happens we separate ourselves more and more from God.

 

When Mother Teresa came to the States in 1994, she was invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast. Most of her talk was about abortion and how it is destroying our society. ‘If we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other?”

 

Why is sexual sin more serious than other sin? God made us in his image and God’s Spirit dwells within us from baptism, which means our body is a sacred thing. When a child is conceived God creates a soul for that new life, which is immortal. The love between a man and a woman has the potential to become another life, which is imitating God. The love between the Father and the Son, is another life, the Spirit. Human sexuality mirrors God, which is why it is so sacred. That is also why Satan attacks it so much. Satan does everything to try and lead us away from God, simply because he hates God and hates God’s creation.

 

The Lord also showed this to the Apostles, which is why they wrote about it. St. Paul writes:

“Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But the immoral person sins against his own body.” (1 Cor 6:18)

 

“Do you not know that neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who practice homosexual acts… will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

(1 Cor 6:9)

 

The Apostles didn’t just decide this themselves. The Lord revealed this to them, just as He showed Marino Restrepo the exact same thing in his experience. It is easy to get the impression that these teachings just applied to cultures centuries ago and that they are no longer relevant, but that’s why the Lord continues to give people different experiences, like Marino Restrepo and many others, so that we will realize it is just the same today. What was sinful remains sinful. What used to separate us from God will still separate us from God and it is only in God we will find our happiness, which means that anything sinful we need to take seriously.

 

Marino Restrepo was not a bad person, but the life he was living was extremely sinful before God and would have cost him losing heaven forever if he had died then. The Lord does not want that for any of us.

 

One of the lines in Scripture which I believe we need to hear often, is this:

[Jesus said] “It is not those who say, “Lord, Lord…” who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)

 

Everything that God shows us is to help us. God’s design works, which is why He gave us the Scriptures, to show us in detail what to do and what to avoid. God wants us to be with him when we die. That is what He has created us for. But for this to happen we must try and live as the Lord tells us to live.

 

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” (1 Cor 6:19-20)