22nd Sunday in ordinary time, August 29, 2010
Fr. Anthony Brankin
Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-14 He who humbles himself will be exalted.
Audio MP3 12 min.
Summary: Years ago in Cuba, children were taught by the government to pray to Fidel Castro, not to God, for ice cream. This kind of thinking makes God our slave, our personally trained seal. It reverses things — it makes God a servant of us. However, God gives what is good for us. St. Monica, whose feast day it was last week, prayer for 18 years for her son to come back to the faith. Augustine, the son, prayed for what was bad for him until he could not longer resist the flood of graces from heaven. Prayer is a conversation with God. It shows us how deeply God loves us by how He answers our prayers.
This homily is brought to you by the Georgetown Visitation Sisters, in Washington, D.C. Saint Francis de Sales’ “little virtues” of gentleness, kindness, humility, and cheerful optimism shape monastic life for these sisters
Full homily text: Years ago, my sister, Mary Anne, God rest her soul, was a teacher in a Chicago public high school. One day she came home and said, “You wouldn’t believe what I just heard today.”
And she proceeded to tell us about one of the teachers from her school. Now it seems that this teacher was from Cuba, and was able to escape from Fidel Castro and his totalitarian government. And the story she told was chilling and disturbing.
One technique the government used in its campaign to erase the Catholic faith from the hearts of the people— particularly the children—was to send government men into the schools for a little anti-spiritual exercise.
What would happen is that one or two men would walk into a classroom—stop the lesson—very politely, of course, and then ask the children if they would like some ice cream.
You could imagine how exited the children would become—ice cream in the middle of the afternoon. Party time! Then the government men would say to the children—let us pray to Jesus for the ice cream—and see if he will send it to us.
So they would all pray—even the agents—and of course, they too had been raised Catholic, so they knew all the prayers. And I am sure they made a real show of it—mugging and pretending—with exaggerated looks and movements.
Well they would pray for a few moments like this for the ice cream, and the men would say, “Now let’s see if Jesus brings us the ice cream.”
The ice cream does not come. The men say, “Well maybe we should pray louder and harder. Come on. Let’s really pray this time!”
And so the dear little children would close their eyes and fold their hands and–oh-so-earnestly—renew their prayers and requests and petitions for the ice cream.
Still no ice cream, and the agents say, “We are not praying hard enough. Surely Jesus will hear us if we try one more time!” And they prayed one more time.
You could imagine, how disappointed the children were by now—they have been expecting ice cream—and a party—and the end of class—for some time now and they have been persuaded by these government men that if they pray to Jesus, Jesus will bring them their ice cream. But nothing is happening.
It looks pretty bleak and it doesn’t look like Jesus is going to deliver.
At that moment, the agent in charge says, “Wait a minute! I know! Let us pray to Comrade Fidel. Maybe if we pray to our fearless revolutionary leader, we can get the ice cream we want. Maybe if this Jesus won’t listen to us—maybe it is because He doesn’t like us or maybe He doesn’t even exist. But Comrade Fidel exists, and he loves the little children of Cuba. Let’s see if we pray to him maybe we can get our ice cream.”
And you know the rest of the story—there are other agents outside the room—right behind the door—loaded down with boxes of ice cream—just waiting for the signal—the right words—and as soon as the children start praying to Fidel, the men burst in through the door, “Here is the ice cream! As much as you want! Fidel has answered your prayers.”
What evil—what cynicism. To warp what we Catholics believe about prayer, and then use their natural desires along with that wrong notion of prayer to destroy children’s faith in God and in Jesus. It was probably very effective—at least until the children grew older and thought about how they were being used and abused. I would guess that this technique in one form or another has been used by atheist governments—since the time of the French Revolution to erase the love of God from the hearts of the people—in order to replace it with the love of a politician. That is pretty sick. But that has been the story and the pattern and the technique for a few hundred years now. And they do it all the time—and every time they come to power.
Actually, we have bought into it in some way. You and I, we have this feeling that has been taught to us—that if we have a problem—if we can’t live our lives as happily and successfully as we used to, then our government will fix it. The president will take care of it—because isn’t he—more or less—all-powerful? And we do that all the time.
But I guess another question we might ask is: Why does it work? Why is this such an effective technique?
Why do we start doubting the power of God—and then the existence of God when this or that prayer doesn’t seem to be answered?
Well what this technique does is persuade us—and our children—to believe that God is not God, but our slave—our minion—our stooge. This little government exercise in false religion convinces us very easily that when we pray, God must respond—and now and in the way we want. We do not expect God to respond to us with wisdom-or with love or Mercy—but on instinct and command. We have made God our own personal trained seal.
That is wrong and that is cynical—and that is not who God is or how he answers our prayers. Because it denies the nature of the relationship between the Creator and the created. It reverses it. It makes God some sort of servant to us, His ungrateful bosses.
If your child were to look at you the parent and constantly deal with you as if you had been hired to take care of their every whim—as if you had to obey them—“Listen up, you two, I want this and I want it now!”
Would that not be an impossible situation? To even hear it put in this way is disturbing. Because that is not how it is supposed to work—that is not the dynamic that obtains between children and their parents—or between us and God. If parents are to be good parents—and modern parents are to be commended for their efforts in this increasingly difficult world—but if parents are to be good—they are to give their children—not what the children want, but what they need. Everything a loving parent does for their child is to help them be healthy and whole—and genuinely happy. That may coincide with what the child wants—but it doesn’t have to. If a parent tells a child that they are not getting this or that because it is not good for them—is that not the surest sign of love?
That is what we mean when we say God loves us and answers our prayers. Because if God loves us, He cannot fulfill bad prayers or silly prayers or harmful prayers. He would not be an all-Powerful God who loves us with an all-knowing mind—if He were to send us everything we ask for as soon as we ask for it.
He is God, and when He sees that this or that positive answer to this or prayer is good for us, then He will send it to us. We would expect nothing less of our parents—we expect nothing less of God.
I mention all this today because we just celebrated two marvelous feasts—that of St. Monica and her son Augustine. We have all heard the story of how Monica prayed eighteen years for her son Augustine to come back to the faith. She could have stopped at 18 minutes—18 days—18 months might have been considered long enough to decide that God doesn’t listen. But she never gave up. As a loving mother she wanted what was best for her son—not what he wanted. And that is where it gets complicated, because Augustine was praying for that which was foolish and would harm him. In this way we see how God would not answer Augustine’s prayers while at the same time He wanted to answer Monica’s.
Now her prayer took so long to get a response—not because God did not think it was good for Augustine, but because her son was so hard-headed. Augustine refused God’s graces for 18 years until Monica’s prayers— piling up outside the door of his heart—could no longer be resisted and it all flooded in upon his soul—and made him one of the greatest saints in the history of the Church.
In a certain sense—we could say that God was as relentless as Monica—for He would not give up on Augustine either. God denied him his foolish petitions until finally his mother’s prayers broke through.
But the lesson for us is clear—certainly God wants us to pray for what we want and if what we want is what we need—then that is wonderful. But God also wants us to understand that prayer not some conditioned reflex—where we press the prayer button and God jumps.
Prayer is the lifting up of the mind and heart to God—where we are in conversation with Him and He is in conversation with us. And He tells us in prayer that He is a God of love—and He truly loves us; and He shows us how deeply He loves by the way He answers our prayers.