Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
St. Francis of Assisi Church – September 18, 2016
Reverend Robert W. Marshall, Pastor
Last month, we saw countless news stories of the devastating floods that hit southern Louisiana. This is an area that is no stranger to water – hurricane warnings come frequently. But these floods caught people off guard. Water usually comes from the Gulf, not from the rivers and streams and bayous. We watched as families hurriedly packed some of their belongings and tried to drive – or travel by boat – to higher ground. Twelve years ago, I too was on the road leaving Louisiana. I had travelled to New Orleans with some of my parish staff to attend a stewardship conference. Almost as soon as the conference began, the warnings of Hurricane Ivan grew more intense. Eventually, we recognized that it was time to go when we noticed that they had started boarding up the French Quarter. So, like over a million others that day, we got into our car and began our evacuation and – four hours later – we had finally left the New Orleans metropolitan area. In between we saw business people scrambling to get to the airport before it closed. We saw families crowded into cars or vans with their clothes and their photo albums and their children’s toys and some food. At the first rest stop in Mississippi, we saw hundreds of folks taking a break and letting the pets they had brought with them take one as well. It was quite a caravan – and though it was frustrating to move only about a mile an hour at some points, we only saw one person who was overwhelmed by it all. He had been cut off by someone in the traffic and got out of his truck with a baseball bat intent on settling the score. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and – as we drove away – I think he put the bat back in his truck and drove off.
I can understand that man’s frustration. It must have been very aggravating to have to leave your home, your belongings, to be separated from those you love, and not to know when or to what you might return. There was a helpless feeling among all of us who were evacuating – knowing that we were at nature’s mercy, that all we could really do is pray, and sensing somehow that prayer is inadequate.
If we listened carefully to the second reading, then we heard St. Paul tell Timothy that all should offer supplications, prayers, petitions and thanksgivings for everyone – and especially for those in authority – that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. How well we can relate to those words! In these days, do we not find ourselves praying more and more for those in government and those first responders who are doing what they can to ensure that all of us might one day lead quiet and tranquil lives? Do we not pray as well for our service men and women, that through their brave efforts quiet and tranquil lives may be possible for people throughout the world? If the floods in the South and the fires in the West and the tornadoes in the North have taught us anything this summer, it is that though our country is the richest and most powerful nation on earth, we are still vulnerable to nature. Though we can buy many things, we cannot buy security and peace. God alone is the source of our peace. God alone can bring us tranquility. Far from being inadequate, prayer – our continual, humble dialogue with the loving God who made us – is all that really counts. I’m sure there were many prayers being offered in that traffic jam in New Orleans, and by the families who were escaping last month’s flooding – some prayers by folks who probably hadn’t prayed in years. They, perhaps, were praying to change the level of the water – to change the mind of God, as it were. Authentic prayer, of course, doesn’t change God – it changes us.
When we open ourselves up to prayer we allow God to speak to our hearts. We get his perspective on things. When we pray for the flood victims and their families, for example, we may well hear God tell us that he shares our sorrow, and that he is there to comfort all of us. When we pray for our national leaders, God’s message may be an increase in wisdom to carry forth our own civic responsibilities. And when we pray for our enemies and persecutors – and, like Jesus, we must always pray for our enemies and persecutors – then God may enable us to appreciate anew that all humans are made in the image and likeness of God.
Today is designated as Catechetical Sunday – the day when we give thanks for all of those who teach the faith to others – Catholic School teachers, PRE teachers, those who volunteer in Youth Ministry and in Adult Faith Formation. And this year’s theme for Catechetical Sunday is “Prayer: The Faith Prayed.” The theme reminds us that prayer is an essential expression of our faith. Learning to pray ourselves and teaching others to pray is the work of a disciple. Yes, prayer has such great possibilities, if we would only give it a try. Unfortunately, our world gets in the way.
As Jesus said in the gospel, you cannot serve both God and mammon. The word, “mammon,” is derived from Greek, but is a translation of the Hebrew-Aramaic original. It means, “that in which you put your trust.” So Jesus is telling us that you cannot serve God and put your trust in another. He might just as well tell us that you cannot adequately pray to God if your trust is in money or power or the status of this world. You can pray with an open heart. You can pray with a heart filled with pain. You can pray with a broken heart. But you cannot pray with a divided heart, with a heart that belongs to another. You cannot use God to hedge your bets. We either trust in God or we do not. If our prayer seems ineffective at times, perhaps that is the reason. We are trying to have it both ways. The sense of helplessness we felt in that evacuation caravan was more than a call to prayer. It was undoubtedly God’s call to trust more deeply in him. We stamp our national motto – In God We Trust – on all of our money. It may now be time to live it out – to actually trust in God, and not in money.