Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

I am sure we have all had the experience of having prayers apparently go unanswered. And even when they are answered, it may seem to take a very long time. We all know the story of St. Monica praying for her son, Augustine. Her prayers were finally heard, giving us St. Augustine, bishop and doctor of the Church, but it took 17 years! (I looked it up). Yet in today’s gospel, Jesus says to us: “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” This suggests that an answer should come much more quickly than it usually seems it does to us.

Then we have what St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:19: “for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, … was not ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ but ‘yes’ has been in him.” This verse suggests that God’s response to our prayers is always yes. When we put these two together, they suggest that God’s response to us is always immediate and that His answer is always yes. But that is not how we experience things. Often, it may seem to us that the answer is a long time coming, and that the answer is often ‘no.’

Part of this may be a matter of perspective: God is eternal and infinitely patient, while we are limited and very impatient. So, while the answer may seem to us to be a long time coming, from God’s perspective, the answer is immediate. I do think that this is part of the answer, and so we should try to see things more from God’s perspective rather than our own.

Another part of it may be God’s wisdom. God sees further than we do, and He recognizes that some of the things we desire aren’t for the best and may even be harmful. I often think about the fire engine red Ferrari that I would love to drive but that God has never provided. But I have become wise enough to see that I would end up in the top of a tree if I got what I wanted.

But I think the best answer lies in the fact that prayer actually doesn’t change God. Rather, it changes us and opens us to God’s influence. So, when we open ourselves to God in prayer, God’s answer is always immediate, and the answer is always ‘yes,’ but that yes is to what is best for ourselves and those we are praying for at the time, as seen from God’s eternal and wise perspective. In my first parish in Kingston, Jamaica, there was an older couple who were true pillars of the community. When the husband was diagnosed with cancer, we all prayed for his healing. After a year he passed away, but all of us, including his wife, were at peace with this outcome, because God had healed our hearts and prepared us for what we now saw as the outcome that God desired.

Reflection by Fr. Aquinas Keusenkothen, OSB