Our catechism teaches us that God
loved us first. Although we often lose
our focus on Jesus, he never tires of calling us and asks us to encounter him
in prayer. Prayer is our natural response to God’s love. In the unfolding history of
our salvation we can see how this drama of God calling us has played out. If we pay close
attention, we can also see it playing out in our very own lives: we turn away
from God, or as we explained yesterday to our catechumens, we “miss the mark”,
yet God never stops loving us.
Last night someone very special who just returned from a weekend Catholic retreat
called me. She was able to take time
away from her busy week to spend intimate time in prayer. She exclaimed to me
how she was able to possess once again that sense of hope she had not felt in a
long time. She also said something that moved me: she said she realized it was
not God who had abandoned her; it was that she had lost her way and she knew
she had to return to Him. This
conversion experience made her realize that she needed to pray more and to do
things differently. She returned with a new attitude of compassion.
How easy that is to happen to all
of us; we get too caught up in what we are doing and how little time we spend
in praying and in reflecting on who we are “becoming” each day. I too get distracted by “doing all the right
things”, and easily lose my mark. Prayer
is the narrow road- the way back to God.
In yesterdays Gospel we heard
Jesus speak of a parable about having faith and having persistence in prayer.
(Lk 18: 1-8) Often we look upon this story to remind us to be persistent in our prayer life
and there is truth to that. But if we look at this parable closely, maybe Jesus
is telling us to put ourselves in the position of the one being able to help
the woman pleading to God for justice.
Often times we are the ones who can be the voice, the hands and feet of Jesus to
the weak and vulnerable in our world.
Jesus concludes his story by
asking, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Our prayer is
that we transform our prayerful attitude into a disposition of bold faith,
hope, and love. Let us always take time to be prayerful and learn to live with an attitude of compassion.
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