5th Sunday after Easter 17.5.09 Time to pray
The epistle exhorts us to spend more time taking in the full meaning of our faith, and not just skimming the surface, like one who glances in a mirror.
I am fortunate to spend a lot of my time dwelling on matters concerning the faith, it being my job, so to speak. Having to preach forces me to think about what I am going to preach. Having to hear confessions or to counsel people forces me to think about questions that I might otherwise have left alone. And I have more time to pray than most people would.
But where does this leave you? The layperson has to find time for these things too, in the midst of many concerns.
Do you find time to pray, or are you swept along in the river of busy-ness, giving only scant time to spiritual matters?
Not everyone has to pray the same amount but everyone does have to pray.
Not everyone has to read books and study the faith, but everyone must have some kind of mental hold on what the faith requires.
If we don’t think about these things we will not be likely to take them seriously in the conduct of our lives.
Our behaviour will be governed by our thoughts and beliefs, our values. It is vitally important we get these beliefs right.
If we follow the ways of the world we will value money, health, popularity, pleasure etc and think nothing of God or of what happens after we die.
But if we come to know God as central to our lives, and come to understand His will for us, then we are going to live differently, and much more happily.
Most of us would feel that the spiritual is important but would be struggling to give it due priority.
The world seems to make first demand on us and we pray only when we have dealt with everything else, and that can mean never.
Even priests and religious can neglect prayer as they hurry from one meeting to another!
Then when we do have time we may be too tired to pray or even think on a spiritual plane.
If we did pray more, did come closer to God, we would find a lot of things opening up for us that presently remain closed.
Our Lord in the Gospel is encouraging His disciples to ask for more things in prayer, and with greater confidence (Amen, amen, I say to you: if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto, you have not asked anything in my name. Ask, and you shall receive; that your joy may be full.)
There is a lot of unrealized potential out there.
Generally we have not begun to reap the benefits of our faith. We grumble, worry, and fret about many things when a glorious new life is waiting there for us.
Look at the advertising. They will show a tropical beachfront and someone sipping a drink in a hammock and run a slogan like: All this at your doorstep. So we should buy the package and go and stay at that holiday resort.
All the more so if we have heaven ‘at our doorstep’ and we can be free from the usual earthly ways of thinking. Give time to God and watch our faith grow. Then see how our lives take on a more purposeful and more rewarding quality.
We know where we are going, perhaps for the first time.
It takes discipline to move in this direction. Get out of bed earlier, turn off the television or computer; learn to appreciate silence and solitude; learn to be patient in longer times of prayer.
It might seem boring or useless at first but it is the doorway to a whole new world.
And it is something we should all be doing whatever our position in life. No one can claim to be too busy to find the central purpose of life itself.
What we lack, either in time or understanding, may the Lord supply!
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