Homily For Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C, 27th July, 2025. The World Day For Grandparents and the Elderly

 

Reading: Gen. 18:20-32; Ps. 138; Col. 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

Rev.  Fr. Emmanuel Emenike  Onyia

PRAYER REQUIRES PATIENCE, PERSEVERANCE AND PERSISTENCE DIALOGUE WITH GOD

As contingent beings, it is common for human beings to reach out to other people when we need something. And oftentimes we seek the intervention of God, especially in some difficult needs and situations.  No doubt that a good number of us have in one way or the other looked up to God or people for help. 

I don’t know if you have ever been truly in need of something from a friend who is capable of giving you what you need, but you have not found a way to ask him to give you what you need now? Or have you been in a situation where you needed something from a friend but couldn't get it because you didn’t know how to reach them easily? Such a situation can put one under serious pressure. 

Then the question that comes to mind is, are we going to give up or persevere in our struggles on waiting or reaching out to him? This kind of disposition is what we experience sometimes when we pray and our requests are yet to be granted because we don’t really know how to dialogue with God in prayer.

Hence, the disciples of Jesus, knowing how important prayer is, and having watched Jesus pray, asked him to teach them how to pray, as we have it in our Gospel passage today, where Jesus taught them our Lord’s Prayer. As we know prayer is a means of communication between God and humanity. It is a close link by which we reach God who dwells in our hearts. It is through prayer that we discern the will of God for us.  Thus we can learn how to dialogue with God in prayer from this prayer Jesus taught his disciples the pattern of all prayers 

In this prayer, we have four traditional dimensions of prayer, which include: glorification of God, submission, justice and protection. Jesus begins by saying: Father, hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come, thereby teaching us that we begin any of our prayers by glorifying God. 

Following this is our total submission to God’s providence when we say: Give us each day our daily bread. Then, we acknowledge the justice and mercy of God when we say: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. And finally, we ask for God’s guidance and protection when we say: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from all evil.

This tells us that we should approach God with confidence as a friend, persisting until we obtain what we need as Jesus illustrated with the story of a father and his son and a man who had a visitor and needed the help of his neighbours. With this illustration, Jesus emphasised that if we, who are prone to evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more shall the heavenly Father give to those who ask him. 

So, we should learn how to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking in prayer until we obtain the answer we need. Just like a boy asking his father for a fish or an egg, knowing that his father would not give him a snake or a scorpion instead of the fish or egg he had requested. 

This is what Abraham demonstrated in our first reading when he kept asking for God’s mercy on behalf of the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. But more than Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord Jesus sacrificed his life for the redemption of humanity. 

This is what St. Paul in our second reading today made us know when he said: The Lord has brought you to life with him, he has forgiven us all our sins. He has overridden the Law, and cancelled every record of the debt that we had to pay; he has done away with it by nailing it to the cross. This of course, shows us how God is willing to hear us whenever we call on him in prayer.

 Dear friends, as contingent beings, there are times when we ask and we receive, seek and find, knock and it is opened to us. But there were also times when we asked but did not receive, sought but did not find, knocked but the door remained shut. In such moments, persistence and perseverance in prayer are what we are called to embrace. 

These will help us to understand how to trust God knowing that he does not need to be informed of our needs, thereby encouraging us never to lose heart. This is certainly one of the biggest challenges of our faith today. People are not just patient with God. We want to have everything right now as it is hot. Patient, persistence and perseverance are very difficult virtues for most people today. Let us learn from our elderly people whom we celebrate today. For their lives teach us patience and perseverance. 

Therefore, it is time for us to change our perspective and wrong disposition towards prayers. It is time for us to spend more quality moments in prayer and be connected with God. We must let our prayers also be meaningful and genuine from our hearts. It is time for us to improve the quality of our prayer life by imitating Jesus, who always prayed to his heavenly Father at every possible opportunity. 

But some of us end up spending lots of time reciting the prayers, and yet we do not mean what we say, because we have not learnt how to dialogue with God in prayer, especially when we have a wrong disposition born from an unforgiving heart, which must be redirected before we can get a positive response from God. 

LET US PRAY: Lord God, oftentimes we are not patient with you in our prayers, because we don't know how to dialogue with you in prayers. Give us the grace to learn how to dialogue with you and to persevere and be persistent in our prayer life and in every other thing we do in life, especially in our relationship with others. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Happy Sunday.