16th Sunday Ordinary Time C 20 July 2025 Sermon

16^th Sunday Ordinary Time C 20 July 2025 Union with God

You are watching your child compete and he comes last. Do you cease from loving him?

When we love people it is for ‘who’ they are, not ‘what’ they can do. ‘Being’ rather than ‘doing’.

You don’t love someone who is a good cook or a handyman who can fix anything. It is good if others have talents, but there has to be more to love than abilities.

Think of a baby who can do nothing at all but is much loved.

We are encouraged in today’s Gospel to pray. Prayer has a lot to do with love.

Prayer can be seen as impractical, as not getting the job done. There is a temptation to skip the prayer and just do whatever work is required. See a problem, fix it.

It is good to have a work ethic, but necessary that we pray also.

Prayer is a communication in love, a communing. God wants us to be one with Him, to have a union of hearts and minds.

Martha was impatient to get the job done; Mary had the better part. She had a deeper love and was happy just to be with Our Lord (Lk 10,42).

You would not have to convince Romeo that he needs to see Juliet once a week! He would want to do that more than anything else, and this is where God wants to see us heading – that we learn to love Him, to seek Him out, and be happy to rest in His presence.

We can find prayer hard work, not always enjoyable and not always obviously fruitful. Many dismiss it as a waste of time. But remember Romeo or Mary of Bethany.

Then there is the temptation to cut corners. I don’t go to mass because I am out helping people. But if you go to Mass you will help them more effectively.

And growing from one week to the next we get more and more ‘practical’.

And the work we do will be better guided. Setting the right objectives, better time management - these will come from prayer.

As one Christian said: if I have more work than usual to do, I pray more so that I can do it!

Prayer is practical, after all. It gets things done and it can also be seen as itself a kind of ‘job’.

To worship God is one of our main ‘jobs’. God does not need our praise, but we need to praise Him.

This desire is planted in us; it is part of our nature. We need to be loved, but we also need to love. Many stop with human love, but we have to go one stage further – to love God.

Loving God for what reason? Certainly we thank Him, but we do not see him just as provider or organizer.

It is again ‘who’ rather than ‘what’.

We identify with mind and heart. We think the same thoughts and want the same things as God does – always allowing for our inferior status.

When two hearts beat as one. Think of Mass as being with someone you love, and therefore enjoyable and fruitful.

‘All we can do is pray’ is often said in a tone of resignation. It actually means more than it sounds.  Prayer makes things happen.

We pray that others will join us, will lift their hands to God; that churches will be overflowing.

For what we have not been getting right, there is a prayer for that too - Contrition restores things at any time by humbly seeking God's mercy.  Lord, teach us to pray (Lk 11,1).