God Heals Always

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?”-Luke 11:13.

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)

Gen 18.20-32;
Ps 137;
Col 2.12-14;
Lk 11.1-13

The goal of our spiritual life is union with God. It is a wrong perspective to say that we pray just so that we can become more virtuous. It is an inadequate perspective to say that we pray so that we can better understand the object of our faith. It is certainly the case that we pray so that we may lead lives more pleasing to our Maker. It is also true that we pray in order to deepen our grasp of the doctrines of the faith. Yet ultimately we engage in both these aspects of the life of prayer for a more fundamental purpose. We do it in order to love God and become like Him. That’s what it’s all about: the love of God. We love God to live in union with Him, a union which begins here on earth, and flowers in eternity.

Jesus tells us to start our prayer with Father.  The word father is treated 414 times in NT. The most important father Jesus knew as a child was Joseph, his foster father. Father is Jesus’s primary word for God.   It is the most important metaphor of Jesus’s teaching.  It is of great interest that every reported prayer of Jesus in the New Testament starts with the word Father!   What a beautiful compliment to Joseph!  So we begin our prayer with the intimate word father!  St Paul of the Cross would spend two hours on first word of the Our Father!

Luke next relates the words “hallowed be Your name!”    The idea of “holy” in the Scriptures is in Hebrew qadosh.  It is used 115 in OT.  “I am the Lord, your Holy One” Is 43:15. The angels cry out which shakes the heavens.“Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts,   The whole earth is full of His glory.” Is 6:3     Holy in the Latin phrase is: mysterium tremendum et fascinans. That means as mysterium, the numinous is “wholly other”– entirely different from anything we experience in ordinary life.-Rudolf Otto. In NT Greek holy is hagiosand is used 233 times. In Mary’s beautiful prayer she exults: “For the Mighty One has done great things for me; And holy is His name.” Lk 1:49 

God is calling us to holiness. How foolish, how hell-bent blind we are, if we fail to answer that call. It is God Himself Who has put into our hearts and minds the restless desire for Himself. Our better nature seeks the Lord. Oh yes! We can smother this God-given desire, we can impede this search, in a thousand foolish ways: with the disordered lusts of the flesh; with the deluded ambitions of pride; with the sybaritic cravings for countless foppish luxuries, the luscious amuse-bouches of Satan’s poisoned banquet, those beguiling delicacies which so quickly turn to ashes in our mouths.

If you wish to live a happy life and a peaceful death then walk in all the ways to holiness till death. Abraham our father in faith is a friend of God that was why, God granted him the privilege to intercede and bargain for his people. Our Lord and Mediator, Jesus Christ tells us at the end of today’s gospel that; “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?”God wants to us to partake in his divine life. We are one in his design. Let us humbly come before God Our Father in faith and confidence asking him that peace will reign in our world today. O Lord help me to slow down and listen to your speaking and to see your presence and understand how much you love me.Amen.

Shalom

OSHO.

Credit:
This article is written by Rev Fr. Joseph Osho OSJ. Please visit his personal blog @ https://www.blogger.com/profile/10377666931103644634
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