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Weekly Reflections
20th Sunday of Ordinary
August 17, 2008
FIRST READING SECOND READING GOSPEL READING
Isaiah 56:1, 6-7 Romans 11:13-15, 29-32 Matthew 15:21-28
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My house shall be called a house of prayer!
Today we can reflect in our own lives about our personal life of prayer and about the life of prayer in our community. If there is anything that marks the life of Jesus Christ, it is that He prays and He invites us to pray to our Father in heaven. Over and over Jesus leads us to God and finally we realize that Jesus is God and our Lord.
The first reading today, from the Prophet Isaiah, is clear that all peoples are called to pray and to trust in the Lord. Salvation is meant for all. When we hear this reading, we must allow ourselves to be formed by it and live in our own personal lives and in our communities this reality of prayer and this reality that all peoples are called to be saved by our Lord Jesus.
At a practical level, this means that we must take time every day, as Jesus seems to have done, and go apart to pray to the Father. We must arrange our lives in such a way that we have time to pray--and then we must take that time and actually pray.
Today's Gospel from Saint Matthew reminds us that we come as beggars into the presence of the Lord. We must have the courage of beggars and insist with the Lord that He hear us and answer all our needs. It is so easy to rely on our own gifts and on what the Lord has given us already and be content. Instead, we must be like this Canaanite women who insists that the Lord help her.
What do we pray for? Do we feel strongly enough about our lives and the lives of others that we can insist with our Lord that He do something? So often prayer is really about where our heart is, what we think and feel most strongly. Are we passionate about anything? Do we care about anything or anyone?
Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans talks about disobedience bringing God's mercy. Today hardly anyone thinks about disobedience at all. We have become obedient to our own desires and often seem to have abandoned even thinking about what God asks of us in His revealed word.
As we hear the readings today, we are invited once again to allow God to form us. We want to be His followers in the very best way by living as He invites us to live. Let us pray for a deep understanding of God and the courage to live as God invites us to live: with mercy and with humble hearts. |
| Blessing and love to all ~
+M. J. Kimo Keawe, Presiding Archbishop
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.
~Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn~
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