October 19, 2025

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

Exodus 17:8-13; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8

Earlier this year, I turned sixty years old. It was a Sunday, and Father Oscar made sure everyone at Mass that day knew about it. Little did I know that, at the time I was born, they were giving out sixty year warranties on gall bladders. I found out about this when early in the morning three days later. A pain in my chest sent my to the hospital for emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder due to stones building up in it. Earlier this year I also had a problem show up on a heart stress test that ended up being a false positive. But one thing that became clear to me during these events: this community was behind me all of that time, praying for me. I got on the prayer list, and people would stop me frequently in the hall and tell me that they were praying for me. Even long after these events, when I was perfectly well again, they would continue to stop me. Apparently, once you're on the prayer list, people are reluctant to take you off, probably since they aren't sure you're completely well or just showing a good face. You would think as a deacon that I would know how to take my own name off, but I am pretty ignorant of how these things work. We have such wonderful staff and volunteers here at St. James that a lot of things happen that I am blissfully unaware of how they happen – I just know that they do happen, and I am grateful to everyone for that.

Some weeks the theme of our readings is subtle, but this week it hits you over the head: the need to be persistent in prayer. And this is a very topical theme, since it has been a subject of focus for this parish recently. We recently had a parish mission over three evenings looking at missional prayer and the role of prayer in helping us to bring Christ to all people living in our parish, not just our parishioners or Catholics. For the last several months we have been more specific about adding the prayer intentions of our pope and our bishop to our Mass intentions. We started several years ago having a weekly prayer intention that we could pray for as a parish – this week it will be praying for those celebrating their jubilee in Rome, which are the Roma, Sinti, and traveling peoples. Although Christ demands action to relieve suffering of those around us when it is possible, in many circumstances we are not able to do that, and so prayer is our call as a community to help that situation and to be in solidarity with people in need of solace. Even when action is possible and we do something tangible, we should also pray for that situation, since prayer will help us to focus as a community on the need to prevent it in the future.

But let's back up for a second. This type of prayer, what we do at Mass in the Prayers of the Faithful and what we often do for ourselves or others when they request prayers for a certain need, are only one type of prayer, called an intercession or a petition. But there are also the prayers of blessing and adoration, praising God, there are prayers of lament, offering up suffering like Jesus did on the cross, prayers of thanksgiving for what God has given us, and prayers of confession, admitting our weaknesses and asking for God's guidance. The Book of Psalms, which essentially was the Jewish people's hymn book, contains all of these types of psalms, since all hymns are also prayers. We use all these types of prayers during our Mass and other liturgical celebrations outside of Mass, and they are appropriate for communal prayer.

But there are other types of prayer that are as individualistic as there are different individuals. There are structured prayers such as rosaries, chaplets, novenas, Liturgy of the Hours, and others. There is also silent thoughtful prayer, the most common being either meditation, which is reading something and then reflecting on it – Lexio Divina is a structured form of this that is used when reading scripture – or meditation, a silent form of prayer that is being conscientiously in the presence of God with our questions, cares, and of course joys. Now some people will tell you that meditation is too Budist or that unscripted group prayer is for the Protestants, but don't you believe them for one second. All prayer that is both respectful as well as sincere about your situation in life is acceptable and pleasing to God. The important thing is not how you do it but that you do it.

This week in our Alpha course, the moderator introduced a painting that hangs in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It is titled “The Light of the World” and was painted by William Holman Hunt [ https://www.stpauls.co.uk/light-of-world-by-william-holman-hunt ]. It shows Christ, standing at a door to a house with a lantern, and he is knocking on the door. At the bottom of the painting, on the frame, is written this passage from the Book of Revelation [3:20]: “Behold! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” There is no door knob visible on the outside of the door. When this was pointed out to the artist, he said that there is a door knob, but it is on the inside of the door – we must let Christ in, he won't force the door open. This is an iron-clad guarantee by Christ, to be with us whenever we open the door to him. And more to the point we are discussing today, the act of opening the door has a name: it is prayer. It is not how you open the door, it's that the door gets opened and Christ invited in.

Saying that prayer is important, and we need to do more of it, is the message that Christ is giving us today, but let's face it: it is very difficult, and all the noise in our lives today, especially from technology, makes it increasingly difficult. I will admit that I struggle a lot with distractions when I pray. Even when I am alone in a relatively quite place I find that my mind starts wandering to things other than what I am praying about. I've heard from many that they too struggle with this, as well as making time in a hectic schedule. But don't give up – God wants to be with us, but we must want to be with him. Remember: even the apostles fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane – that doesn't make it right, it just tells us that it is hard. Christ still chided the apostles, but he also forgave them. And he forgives us to, if we will just try to open the door and talk with him.

As we continue with the Liturgy of the Eucharist, may we be filled with the grace of communion with God both in sacrament and in prayer. Let us take to heart the call of our pope, or bishop, and our parish to pray for the intentions that they present for us to be in solidarity with. Christ promises us that he'll come in and be with us – that's a guarantee, but only if we open the door through prayer.