Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

(Transcription of homily:) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: prayer is essential for Christian life. To be a Christian means that we have to be praying. I would argue that daily prayer, spending some time in prayer each day, is as essential for our spiritual life as daily food and water is for physical life. Now, we’ll take time every day to eat – might be really quick and might be on the go – but we still take time to eat, we still take time to drink water or drink some other type of fluid, so we should be able take some time each day for prayer. Even if it’s just daily petitions asking God for help or assistance in this part of my life or that part of my life, or asking God to intercede on behalf of someone else for their needs, we still need to take time for this prayer.The argument that comes back usually is, “I don’t know how to pray” Well, you know what, none of us do. As St. Paul tells us today, “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.” (Rom 8:26) We don’t know how to pray properly, but we can allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us so that we can engage in prayer.

We can draw closer to our Lord through prayer. We do this by daily taking time for silence and prayer. A vital part of truly entering into prayer is silence. Now, I know some people can pray with meditative music in the background or something, but as we’re learning how to pray, the best thing we can do is learn how to develop silence. We do this simply by turning off anything that makes distracting noise: we turn off the TV, we turn off the radio, the cell phone, MP3 player, all these things that provide the noise that is constantly a part of our lives. Prayer is an action of its own right, and we need to put our focus on that prayer. So, yeah, it’s fine to pray while doing things such as gardening or fishing, but we should really take time every day where our sole attention is on prayer. So don’t do any other activity: don’t be gardening, don’t be fishing during this time. Take this time to focus on that prayer. It might be difficult at first because we live in a culture of constantly doing things and constantly keeping our attention.

To take time to just sit in silence and prayer is difficult, but we can’t develop if we don’t do it. While we’re sitting there in prayer doesn’t mean we have to sit there in absolute silence not moving, not saying anything, not doing anything. We can use devotional tools such as the daily Mass readings. Of course praying over the Scripture is a wonderful way to pray. We can use the daily Mass readings to reflect and meditate on during our prayer time. We can use the Rosary, Divine Mercy Chaplet and other forms of chaplets like that to help us enter into our prayer. There’s also a wonderful prayer called the Jesus prayer. This is most commonly used in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Christian Churches, but we can use it as well. It’s a very simple prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. We just repeat that over and over while breathing: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Just enter into meditation on that phrase and meditating on our Lord.

Now, why do we want to do this? Why do we want to enter into prayer? Why is it so important to pray? Through prayer, Jesus reveals to us the kingdom of heaven. As Christians, we should all desire to be united with the kingdom of heaven, to enter into our Lord’s body as Christians, and then enter into heaven when our time on earth is done. Through prayer, Our Lord helps us understand the parables in today’s Gospel in which he reveals the kingdom of heaven to his listeners, and to us as well. He helps us understand what we need to do to be the wheat in the parable instead of the weeds. He helps us see our mustard seed of faith grow: that when we enter into prayer our faith will grow, our faith will develop. Through our prayer, we receive the strength to be the leaven of faith in the world that we’re all called to be. We’re all called to be that leaven in the world.

Most importantly, through our prayer we will desire all the more to enter into the kingdom of heaven. We don’t want to be the weeds. We don’t want to be that plant which is bundled up and burned in the fire, but we want to be the wheat that is gathered into the barn. To enter into the fullness of life that our Lord promises us should be our desire in life. Prayer will lead us to enter into that fullness of life.

So I repeat myself here: daily prayer is as essential as daily food and drink. It’s a must! To enter to this daily prayer, we just need to be quiet and let the Holy Spirit do its work in our lives.