Jesus doesn’t only teach us what prayer is and how to pray, but he also encourages us to keep at it even when discouraged. I have no doubt that we’ve all felt discouraged at some point or other about prayer, feeling at times like we’re on the verge of giving up on God altogether. Asking for something good and life-giving and yet getting no answer can at times lead to extreme despair.
The readings this Sunday invite us not to give up. We’re asked to persist and to persevere, to rely on our experience of God and His promises, on the trust that stems from our relationship with Him and our personal knowledge of His love. Yes, the Gospel invites us to place our trust in the God we know and who has faithfully kept His promises throughout our journey.
Does a young child ever doubt that their good parent will intervene if they are in danger? The sense of safety and protection that a young child feels is based on that child’s experience – the knowledge of the parent’s selfless love, based on what that child has seen and lived.
It’s the same with our Heavenly Father. We can only dare to be shameless in our prayer if we have known God and have seen him intervene in our lives and the lives of those around us. We only expect Him to act because we know, through our experiences, that He can and because we know that He is love. Our experience and personal knowledge of God is what raises our expectations and forms the basis of our trust in Him and His promises.
The Gospel this Sunday doesn’t tell us that people will no longer die of hunger or that wars will not rage on. What we are invited to do is to long for God’s intervention in our life, His involvement and His interest in our needs. And to persevere in asking God - not to give up, because our knowledge of God, our experience is that He is a God of love and “we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called
according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
The invitation this Sunday is once again to stop and reflect, to pause from our routine and to reflect on our relationship with our creator and how confident we are to place our trust in Him. Please join us this Sunday 27th July at 11.00am at the Chapel of the Convent of the Sacred Heart in St Julian’s to celebrate the Eucharist as one community, one body in Christ.
