FIRST READING: Gen 18,20-32
So the LORD said: The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down to see whether or not their actions are as bad as the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out.
As the men turned and walked on toward Sodom, Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham drew near and said: “Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous people in the city; would you really sweep away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike! Far be it from you! Should not the judge of all the world do what is just?” The LORD replied: If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake. Abraham spoke up again: “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am only dust and ashes! What if there are fi ve less than fi fty righteous people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?” I will not destroy it, he answered, if I find forty-five there. But Abraham persisted, saying, “What if only forty are found there?” He replied: I will refrain from doing it for the sake of the forty. Then he said, “Do not let my Lord be angry if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?” He replied: I will refrain from doing it if I can find thirty there. Abraham went on, “Since I have thus presumed to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?” I will not destroy it, he answered, for the sake of the twenty. But he persisted: “Please, do not let my Lord be angry if I speak up this last time. What if ten are found there?” For the sake of the ten, he replied, I will not destroy it.
SECOND READING: Col 2,12-14
You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And even when you were dead [in] transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross.
GOSPEL: Lk 11, 1-13
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” And Jesus said to them, “When you pray say:
‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us. And do not subject us to the test.’”
And Jesus said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.
And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will fi nd; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? 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?
IN OTHER WORDS
The focus of this Sunday’s readings is our need to express our concerns to God in prayer and on how we should pray. I would like to focus on the truth revealed by the first words of the Our Father, which I believe is the substratum of what prayer truly is.
Jesus in prayer must have been a sight for the disciples to ask him to teach them how to pray.
Together with what Matthew in 6:7-8, tells us: “When you pray, do not use a lot of words, as the pagans do for they hold that the more they say, the more chance they of being heard. Do not pray like them. Your Father knows what you need even before you ask him;” this might give us a clue about an important aspect of the message of today’s gospel.
Luke tells us that at the most decisive and important moments in Jesus’ ministry—his baptism, choice of the Twelve Apostles, sermon on the plain, trans-figuration and especially during his passion—Jesus prayed. His teaching was a sample of his own practice of prayer. He teaches first to address God as a loving father, revealing the very heart of his rapport with his God. Yahweh is Abba. Jesus concretely experienced the unconditional love of God his Father. This was like a re which burned from within him and which he wanted to share with everyone making it. This passion explains why the Father’s love became the central message of his preaching – that his hearers might be red by this same experience which the New Testament writers call the experience of God’s Kingdom. This for Jesus was an experience of the Pearl of Great Price, the Treasure in the Field, the one thing necessary as he advised Martha – the God who is love.
If prayer is one of the most important expressions of our relationship with God, then when Jesus asked us to also call God as Father, He must have been teaching us that prayer could only be rooted in the conviction that God is Father to us; that this relationship must be approached from the perspective of total trust and belief in being accepted and loved by Him with no conditions at all.
We pray not in order for God to know our needs (He knows them already even before we ask Him, (Mt. 6:7-8), but so that we may know what he wants from us. Prayer “is not a matter of converting Him to us, but we to Him.” Perhaps this is to which Jesus wants us converted. God’s love is like the sunlight, it is there totally free, undeserved, and at our taking. All we have to do is to bask under that sunlight and let it change us from within. St. John puts it so beautifully and succinctly: Yes, we believe in God’s love! This is what should surface in our awareness every time we say the Our Father.
- Fr. Magdaleno Fabiosa, SVD | USC, Cebu City
An annual project of Logos Publications, The WORD in Other Words Bible Diary contains daily scripture readings and reflections written by priest, brothers, and sisters of the three congregations founded by St. Arnold Janssen (the SVD, SSpS, and SSpSAP). It hopes to serve as a daily companion to readers who continually seek the correlation of the Word of God and human experience. The Word in other words 2016
