July 28th

Post date: Jul 29, 2019 5:5:43 AM

July 28, 2019 Homily by Fr. Karl Schray

Why pray? Jim Butkins was my classmate in the seminary.

He was a good-natured, quiet, model seminarian.

Then leukemia struck him. We stormed heaven with Masses, Novenas and

Rosaries. Nothing worked. It seemed everybody cared except God.

Were we right about that? Was our cynicism misplaced?

Today’s readings insist that it was misplaced.

The prayer of petition is not a pointless but a fruitful exercise.

Perseverance opens all doors and as we heard, even in the middle of the night.

How can we be sure? For a simple reason that God is our father;

our certainty is his fatherhood.

“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?

God is not a CEO or a presiding judge, he is father!

Part of the family with his own chair. Earthly fathers care;

our heavenly Father cares even more. Jesus describes God as “Abba”—

the word means ”daddy.” Let us pray with the devotion

of sons and daughters, unafraid to call God “Abba”.

Like the Apostles, we ask our Lord, “teach us to pray” and he tells us

what to pray for and how to pray for it, too. If we live up to what the

Our Father contains, we would be very in tune with the mind of Christ.

Matthew’s version is the way we pray it. The first part of the Lord’s Prayer

relates to God. We begin by acknowledging God’s existence and calling

God- “Father”. God is a parent to us, and we are his children.

Then we praise God’s name. In praising God’s name, we are praising him.

We pray for the coming of his kingdom—a kingdom of truth and life,

holiness and grace, justice, love and peace.

Each of us has an important part to play in making his kingship a reality.

We pray that his will may be done on earth. That means in our lives, too.

God’s will may not always be the easiest thing to do but it is always the best thing.

The second part deals with us and our needs.

We begin by praying for our daily bread. ’Bread’ stands for all our

material needs. All we really need, however, is enough for today.

We pray for forgiveness for our own sins and for the grace to be able

to forgive those who sin against us. Notice how we say “AS we forgive.”

How can we receive what we do not give to others?

We pray not to be led into temptation. God does not put temptation in our path, but life does. And we, ourselves, walk into temptation of our own accord.

We are asking God to help us to cope with the temptations that come to us uninvited and avoid those of our own choosing. We pray: “Don’t let us fall into temptation.”

Finally, we pray to be delivered from all evil. We can’t expect to never encounter evil. What we are asking for is the grace to be victorious over evil especially moral evil. The original word is “deliver is from the Evil One.”

Unfortunately, like all prayers, the Our Father suffers from repetition. And it tends to be said hurriedly and without thinking, so that much of its meaning is lost. We need to slow it down

and think about the meaning of what we are saying and its implications

for our lives. Above all, we must pray it and not merely say it.