19TH Sunday In Ordinary Time (YEAR A)

A BURDEN FOR PRAYER AND SERVICE

1 Kings 19:9,11-13
Romans 9:1-5
Matt. 14:22-33

During the ordinary season, the Church places before us in the scripture readings, a great wealth of teaching about our faith. In today’s second reading, Saint Paul had been teaching In the Jewish people about writing to the Romans, ‘I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.’  What does He mean? First is that, He was aware of the needs of those for whom he has a responsibility in Christ.  How does he cope with this constant sorrow and anguish?   He says, ‘I say this in union with Christ, and my conscience in union with the Holy Spirit assures me of the same thing.’ So how does he achieve this union with Christ and with the Holy Spirit?  The answer is through prayer. Saint Paul’s teaching on prayer is, in one way, quite simple: ‘Pray without ceasing.’ Let us remember his phenomenal work for Christ, his travels, his preaching, his writing and his persecution. Writing about this to the Christians at Philippi, he also says, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’. By putting his own teaching into practice, and by praying without ceasing, he gained strength from God which enabled him to carry out the divine will.

Let us also consider briefly what has already happened on this one day, as recorded by St Matthew in the passage of his gospel account leading up to today’s Gospel reading – firstly, Jesus heard about the murder of his cousin, John the Baptist; then He worked many cures of healing; and then He performed the remarkable miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, a symbol of the future Eucharist. In so many ways, He showed compassion for the crowds following Him; He was always aware of what they were in need of and was always willing to provide for them – tending to them, comforting them with His word, and, ultimately, with the nourishment of his own body and in all these, he does not seem as if he lost his cousin. Where did he find the strength to achieve all these?

It is therefore quite understandable that Jesus should feel the need to spend some time in private, speaking to His Father. Jesus’ need for private prayer, in the interlude between one demanding activity and the next, should teach us that we all need to take time out for recollection, to speak to God. Without the refreshment that comes from this personal communication with God, we will become weaker in our faith, unable to respond to God’s love to us, and unable to show that love to others. It is perhaps easy to say to ourselves, “I go to Mass every Sunday – is that not enough?” The honest answer, although it may seem rather brutal, is “No – it is not enough.”  There are many graces we receive when we attend Mass, most especially when we receive our Lord himself in the Eucharist, but unless our presence at Mass is strengthened with private prayer, it can easily become mechanical, without thought. To use a phrase from a very different context, we could perhaps be accused of attending Mass ‘without due care and attention’.

Through prayer, therefore, we too can go beyond every human difficulty and experience. We too can face the storms of life, we too can surmount difficulties, and our faith will falter like the faith of the disciples on the boat. Like Peter on the water we feel we are sinking and cry out, “Lord, save me.”  Organizing our lives to make time on the mountain, alone in prayer, will be repaid by God.  As we make more time for him, more time will appear in our lives for everything else.  And as we make time to deepen our faith, we shall lose our fear of sinking.

Fr Joseph Osho