Brothers and sisters, when we were having all that rainy weather last month, my miracle-doubting friend said, "You know why our weather is like this? It's all those darn Christians praying for rain!" She laughed and then said when her Bible-believing, Church-of-Christ mom asks her to pray for rain, she folds her hands, bows her head, and says loudly, "Oh Lord, make a low-pressure system from the North or West come this way and encounter enough upper-air moisture to condensate!" She disputes the effect of prayer -- any prayer -- in this scientific age of ours, which she feels can explain any phenomenon.
C. S. Lewis says that there are really two kinds of people in this world: those who think that the human mind can explain everything perceivable by the human senses, and those who know it can't! After all, materialism is just a great, big giant assumption. How can you KNOW this is all there is, without merely taking that as a given? How much more open-minded, how more Socratic, if you will, to doubt that we can explain with human reason all that we see or otherwise observe or have heard? And those who take that tack know that miracles are not only possible, but probable. And they realize that prayer is not just not pointless, but actually effective.
We have a vivid example of that in our first reading today when Abraham verbally wrestles with God to spare the (evil) towns of Sodom and Gomorrah if there are only 50, then 45, then 40, 30, 20 and finally 10 good men there. Wow. "Let not my Lord grow impatient with me . . . See how I dare to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes . . . .Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord, let me go on . . ." all humble and entirely correct sentiments, but it sure doesn't stop him from petitioning God, praying to Him, begging Him, with what has come to be called "holy audacity," appropriately so, I might add. What a glorious lesson for us, what an example! Keep praying! Don't fear. Look . . . did God smite Abraham, who spoke up "though [he] was but dust and ashes"? No, of course not. And He kept His word. If He had found but 10 good men, He would not have destroyed the towns.
Our Lord repeats this lesson even more clearly and forcefully when He says, "Amen, amen I say to you [always a good idea to give special attention when He uses those emphatic words], ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and the door shall be opened to you." And then He repeats that sentence in a different way: "For he who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." So how can we doubt the efficacy of prayer? And yet some still do. I know good, good people who assert that prayers of adoration and thanksgiving are licit, but prayers of petition somehow aren't. Get out. Of course we can pray. Of course we should pray. Of course we should lift up our fellow men in prayer, much like Moses lifted up his hands in prayer of petition for the Israelites in battle; and when his hands were raised, the Israelites had the better of the fight, and when they were lowered, they had the worse of it. Yet another evocative example of the effectiveness of prayer! So, brothers, keep it up! Keep praying! Don't let anyone tell you what you can and cannot pray for. Don't let anyone belittle your faith and say that you are acting like a child putting a penny in a divine gumball machine and expecting a gumball (I actually heard that from my religious education teacher in Catholic school). Who are you going to believe, Jesus or Mr. Smarter-than-Thou? Jesus has said it; the case is closed!
But the objection could be raised, what if you are praying for something that isn't good for you . . . or something that isn't intrinsically good, period? Well, the answer to that is also given in today's Gospel, of course. The same Man who told us to pray . . . "Ask and ye shall receive" . . . also said, "When you pray, say: . . . Your will be done." And that should cover it. After all, as I was told as a child, "God only says 'No' to your specific prayer in order to say 'Yes' to something even better." I didn't really like or understand that statement, but I could see the eminent reasonableness of it (especially in analogy to human fathers, who do the same thing) and so I chose to believe it. And I still do.
Let us now profess our faith . . .
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