PRAYER LEADS TO PERFECT CHARITY

FRIDAY, THIRTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Rom 9:1-5; Ps 147:12-15,19-20; Lk 14:1-6

Prayer and perfect Charity

If, as we have come to understand, prayer is our desire for God at its foundation, then the basic desire in us gives birth to charity. God gave us this desire at our creation as a means of making us like him. For as we have noted, we shall be like God only when we come to the knowledge of God, suitable to our human nature, and love him with our whole mind, heart, will, and strength. The God-given desire in each of us to seek, know, love, and serve God was corrupted and turned toward self by sin, original and actual. To say that we were spiritually dead means we lost our spiritual path to God by sin, which is disobedience to his divine will. God restores our spiritual path by sending the Eternal Word to us again. Hence, our profession of faith in the Son of Man has reopened the spiritual path for our return to God, giving us a new spirit through which we can immediately connect with the Holy Spirit and commune with Him continuously. This would be impossible without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Subsequently, the human mind can never really comprehend the full measure of the heavenly riches God the Father has offered us in the incarnation of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. We can even say that God offered us more than we lost through the original fall and our actual sins. The more we grasp and enter into the divine largesse made available to us in Jesus Christ, we shudder to think that some are not making any effort to take hold of the heavenly gift of God in Christ Jesus. Saint Paul describes his own anguish for us in today’s passage from Romans. “What I want to say is this: my sorrow is so great, my mental anguish so endless, I would willingly be condemned and be cut off from Christ if it could help my brothers of Israel, my own flesh and blood.” His anguish is made acute by the fact that he suffered the same blindness as a Pharisee in Judaism. Like them, he knew no better until God had mercy on him and revealed Jesus Christ to him. To think that he and his brothers, Jews, had all the preparatory gifts of the patriarchs, covenants, the Law and the Prophets, and yet missed the main gift of God’s Only Begotten Son was the source of serious anguish for him. “They were adopted as sons, they were given the glory and the covenants; the Law and the ritual were drawn up for them, and the promises were made to them. They are descended from the patriarchs and from their flesh and blood came Christ who is above all, God for ever blessed.” They failed to understand that the only thing that matters is faith in Jesus Christ. We must focus on him in prayer to forestall our making the same mistake.

The Jews missed the main gift of God, which is Jesus Christ, because they removed their attention from God to themselves. Once they considered themselves superior to others and took pride in their superiority, all the preparatory gifts became subservient to them in their pride and arrogance. Our Lord showed that their focus was not on the Law by the question he put to them in the house of the Pharisee, where he went for a meal. “There in front of him was a man with dropsy, and Jesus addressed the lawyers and Pharisees. ‘Is it against the law’ he asked, ‘to cure a man on the sabbath, or not?’ But they remained silent, so he took the man and cured him and sent him away. Then he said to them, ‘Which of you here, if his son falls into a well, or his ox, will not pull him out on a sabbath day without hesitation?’” The mistake of the Jews consisted in thinking of themselves and not focusing on God as the author of everything they have received. Our gaze must remain on the gift and the giver; we must never take ourselves seriously but continue to believe the redemptive work of Christ for us and in us. The more we know Christ in his mysteries, the more we grow in the knowledge and love of God. We must use the light of the mystery of Jesus Christ to understand the mystery of God’s love at work in our lives daily. The more we enter into these mysteries, the more we would praise God in Jerusalem. “O praise the Lord, Jerusalem! Zion, praise your God!” This is what our prayer becomes when we attain maturity in Jesus Christ.

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, increase our faith, hope and charity, and make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.