July 24, 2022 (Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

“Lord, Teach Us How to Pray”

by Fr. Dominic DeLay, O.P.

[This is the text composed by the homilist prior to delivering the homily.]

We might hear today’s scriptures and conclude that prayer is about bugging God until God gives in. Or, worse than bugging, begging or even bargaining. Actually, Abraham sounds less like a sincere bargainer than a wheedler, cajoler, coaxer, tickling God’s ears with flattery. If prayer isn’t bugging, begging, bargaining, or worse, what is it? But first, why should we need to ask? Doesn’t God already know better than we do what we want, what we and others need?

One reason we petition God is because Jesus did. All of John 17 is Jesus’ prayer for himself, his first disciples, and us before he goes to the garden and gets arrested. In Matthew, and similarly in Luke and Mark, he prays for himself at the garden: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will” (Mt 26:39). He petitions God from the cross, praying for those who are killing him: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).

Jesus continues to intercede for us, and he instructs us to ask: “Ask and you will receive,” “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son,” “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

Why else do we petition God? It changes us. We believe that our prayers somehow change the world, but the very act of sincere, vulnerable prayer changes us. As we probe our hearts, as God probes them, we discover the possibilities. Our prayers and our hearts enlarge. Abraham’s bargaining with God brings him closer and closer to God’s more compassionate point of view, until Abraham finally asks, “What if there are only ten just people in the city? Couldn’t you still refrain from destroying it?”

We make prayers of petition as an act of faith, of trust. They’re a self-offering, giving our needs and desires to God and volunteering to be part of God’s response in the world. They’re an expression and development of our relationship with God. We ask friends for help. Why not ask God? Most basically, we ask because God prompts our hearts to ask.

But how should we ask? If God doesn’t respond, is it because I asked for the wrong things? Or did I ask in the wrong way? Not well enough? Not often enough? Surely there’s no right way to pray. We pray according to who we are and as prompted by the Spirit. And when prompted, no more, no less.

There is no right way to pray, but we observe that Jesus tends to begin his prayer with thanks. He also gives us the Lord’s Prayer. We can pray it as it is, or we can follow its pattern: giving ourselves over to God’s intimate embrace, then asking that God’s will be done, for what we need today, and for forgiveness.

Dominican friar Herbert McCabe encourages us to be specific in what we ask for. He also suggests we pray for what we really want, not for what we think we should pray for, which, he says, is often the source of our distraction in prayer. McCabe assures us that our prayers will mature in their own time. I think of it this way: I might need to start the day’s petitions with what’s clouding my mind before I can attend to what else the Spirit prompts me to ask for.

Speaking of the Spirit’s prompting, did you ever wonder what Jesus means when he tells us to ask in his name? “Hey, God, this guy Jesus sent me and said to tell you to give me what I ask for.” I suspect asking in his name instead means that we use the authority he gives us to speak for him: what would Jesus ask for in this situation?

One of the most basic petitions is “Thy will be done.” It’s in the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus prayed it in the garden, but not before first asking for what he wanted: “Let this cup pass from me.”

Jesus gives us other specific petitions: “Pray for those who persecute you,” “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers,” “Stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place...”

Catholics like to pray for the dead. We also like to ask the dead to pray for us, whether they’re publicly recognized saints or our deceased loved ones.

And did you notice the crafty end to Jesus’ instructions on prayer today?

“If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

What does it mean to ask for the Holy Spirit? I don’t know, but a general prayer for the Holy Spirit could well become our main petition. We can, in addition, might make it specific: “Lord, give me the Spirit’s gift of insight,” “Grant me the consolation of your Spirit,” “Give me the Spirit’s gift of courage.”

Finally, just a few more of the questions we bring to this kind of prayer: What if I haven’t been praying and feel that, now that I really want or need something, it’s not right to turn to the God I’ve ignored? Surely God comes running whenever and however we turn to God.

What if God doesn’t respond? Does that mean I don’t believe enough? After all, Jesus says, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” It’s a vulnerable position we put ourselves in when we ask God for what we or others need or want. Isn’t that vulnerability, that trust – if incomplete – isn’t that faith?

Then why hasn’t God healed my mother? Why hasn’t God taken away my anxiety? Why hasn’t God stopped all the violence in the world? I’ve asked and I’ve asked. I don’t know, but let’s not start with the false premise that God is testing us or punishing us or making us wait in order to try our patience. God isn’t an abusive lover.

God is always ready to hear our hearts. God’s Spirit is already and always praying within us in sighs too deep for words. God initiates our prayer and inspires our specific petitions. We simply ask, persisting not with desperate quantity but with trusting faith that probes into the mystery of God’s love for us. And that same faith is an opening of the mind and heart to notice and receive God’s response when and how it comes, in all its mysterious, life-giving abundance.