July 24, 2022: 17th Sunday C

 July 24, 2022: 17th Sunday C

“Have you called your mom lately?” In my previous parish, a parishioner reminded me every week to call my mom. I think she herself experienced what it was like to miss her son’s call; a mother knows another mother’s heart. She was right. My mom missed hearing my voice; she wanted to know whether her son was doing well, if anything troubled him, or whether he was happy. Perhaps there are moms here who will be reminding their sons or daughters to call home as they go off to college or move out of town. I really can’t pinpoint why I resist calling her. I can come up with excuses such as ‘I’m too busy,’ ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ or ‘I get fussed at too much when I call.’ At the end of the day though, calling her is my response to her love for me; it is my love in action for her.  

God misses us too when we don’t “call” or talk to him. He misses hearing from us, and he desires to know whether we are doing well or if anything troubles us. We have our own excuses as to why we don’t talk to him: ‘God already knows everything; I don’t need to bother him… What’s the point of talking to God when he doesn’t say anything back to me… I’m angry at God for taking away someone or something that I love… If I’m honest with God about how I really feel, he will be displeased with me.’ Yet, we have this built-in need to talk to God.  We have a thirst to be loved by God. Prayer, our talking to and listening to God, connects us to him. Jesus said that God is not a stranger to us; he is our Father in Heaven. We can bring to him our concerns and needs. He is a good father who provides for what his children need. 

God always takes the first step toward us; he is constantly searching for us. In Genesis, God walks in the Garden of Eden to look for Adam and Eve. After eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve hid in shame from God. God called out to them, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) Adam answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.” If God were to ask each of us, “Where are you,” what is our honest response? 

Are we ‘far away’ from God like a Pharisee who felt he could save himself, or ‘near’ to him like the short Zaccheus who realized that he needed a Savior? Are we like the Rich Young Man who was so much in love with the lures of the world that he walked away from God, or are we like the Prodigal Son who learned that in comparison to the love of the Father everything in the world is rubbish?

God is constantly calling forth from us growth in our relationship with him, and prayer is a means for us to be aware of God whose loving gaze raises our lowly and earthly horizon beyond this world. One Christian writer wrote, “How will a person brought to birth and nurtured in a world of small horizons rise up to you Lord, if you do not raise him by your hand which made him? We become as big or as small as the objects of our love. When the horizon out of which I am living is God, there is room to breathe. When it is less than God, the world becomes suffocating.” 

God has given each of us a free will. He desires our will to be free in order to love people, things, and circumstances within God. Yet, we realize that at times our will is entangled or disordered by initial attractions and excitements. A new role, a new relationship, a new project, a new activity may be attractive to us at first. However, oftentimes our focus and energy shift to these new endeavors at the cost of sacrificing our vocation and prior commitments.  The peace and joy we once enjoyed vanishes from our lives as we attach ourselves more and more to feeding the ego. 

There is an alternative. God is more than willing to free us from these attachments if we ask in prayer. It is through prayer that we become aware of how these attachments restrict us. It is through prayer that God gives us the grace to say, “No, I don’t need this. I need You, God. I don’t need another new activity, project, role, or relationship, not because it is bad, but because it has displaced You God as my center.”  Prayer is as necessary as breathing, Mother Teresa once said. “If we neglect prayer and if the branch is not connected with the vine, it will die. That connecting of the branch to the vine is prayer. If that connection is there then love is there, then joy is there, and we will be the sunshine of God’s love, the hope of eternal happiness, the flame of burning love. Why? Because we are one with Jesus.” (Mother Teresa)

What keeps us from pausing for a minute and simply asking, “God, do you have a moment to listen to me? Do you have a moment to hear about my struggle? Can you help me understand why I am feeling this way?” What father among us would neglect such a request from a child? So Our Lord instructed his disciples including all of us, “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”