Parishioner's Gospel reflection
Ten lepers, only one says thanks
20 October 2019: 29th Sunday of the Year (Cycle C)
Parishioner’s Gospel
Contributor: Bill Smith Luke 18: 1-8
This week’s gospel can be summed up in the few words of the well-known motto – “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again”.
We all have experience in our prayers of making a petition to God for a favour and not getting an immediate response. Wouldn’t it be great if every time we asked God for a favour our wish was granted immediately? But God does not work in that way and probably for our good that he doesn’t.
In the story even the unjust judge is eventually moved by the persistence of the widow.
She would not take ‘No’ for an answer. She kept coming to him until she got justice.
We should remember too that others in less fortunate situations plead to us for help.
Their call is incessant. Do we shut our ears to their pleas? If we want God to listen to our prayers we must listen too.
We can be confident that if we persevere with our petitions to God he will listen and answer us – not necessarily giving us exactly what we have thought best but the answer which in his judgement is the right one.
So “Pray, pray, and pray again”.
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27 October 2019: 30th Sunday of the Year (Cycle C)
Parishioner’s Gospel
Contributor: Aidan Twomey
Luke 18:9-14
I thank you, God, that I am not holy, righteous, hypocritical like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this Pharisee here. I never fast or give too much to the Church.” Er, no that’s not right. I’m pretty sure that’s not the reflection Jesus wanted me to write, but if I’m honest is my immediate reaction to the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. For it is a trap to think that, because Jesus points us towards the contrite sinner who knows his unworthiness before God, the virtues about which the Pharisee boasts are not important. If we are falling into the sins that the Pharisee disdains we should avail of confession! For the Pharisee is a good person, doing good things. His mistake is to believe that good is enough.
Being a good person is not enough, not even nearly enough for God. He wants us to be saints, and the pride of the Pharisee is a serious impediment to our recovery into sainthood. None of us can earn our place in the Kingdom of God by our own merits, and the virtue that the Pharisee displays is a fruit of the grace that God has poured out: the saving grace that the tax collector recognises. But the point is not to snivel before the Lord and accept our sinfulness as a station in life, but to accept the grace that will make us as virtuous as the Pharisee and then, by our co-operation with the work of Jesus through the sacraments, ever onward towards the perfection God wills for us. So we should join in the Jesus prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” But we should also join in the post-communion prayer that the Church in her ancient wisdom has prayed since at least the eighth century and now places on this Sunday every year, a perfect prayer that I always look forward to:
“May your Sacraments, O Lord, we pray, perfect in us what lies within them, that what we now celebrate in signs we may one day possess in truth. Through Christ our Lord, amen.”
Parishioner’s Gospel
Contributor: Bill Smith Luke 18: 1-8
This week’s gospel can be summed up in the few words of the well-known motto – “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again”.
We all have experience in our prayers of making a petition to God for a favour and not getting an immediate response. Wouldn’t it be great if every time we asked God for a favour our wish was granted immediately? But God does not work in that way and probably for our good that he doesn’t.
In the story even the unjust judge is eventually moved by the persistence of the widow.
She would not take ‘No’ for an answer. She kept coming to him until she got justice.
We should remember too that others in less fortunate situations plead to us for help.
Their call is incessant. Do we shut our ears to their pleas? If we want God to listen to our prayers we must listen too.
We can be confident that if we persevere with our petitions to God he will listen and answer us – not necessarily giving us exactly what we have thought best but the answer which in his judgement is the right one.
So “Pray, pray, and pray again”.
*********************************
27 October 2019: 30th Sunday of the Year (Cycle C)
Parishioner’s Gospel
Contributor: Aidan Twomey
Luke 18:9-14
I thank you, God, that I am not holy, righteous, hypocritical like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this Pharisee here. I never fast or give too much to the Church.” Er, no that’s not right. I’m pretty sure that’s not the reflection Jesus wanted me to write, but if I’m honest is my immediate reaction to the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. For it is a trap to think that, because Jesus points us towards the contrite sinner who knows his unworthiness before God, the virtues about which the Pharisee boasts are not important. If we are falling into the sins that the Pharisee disdains we should avail of confession! For the Pharisee is a good person, doing good things. His mistake is to believe that good is enough.
Being a good person is not enough, not even nearly enough for God. He wants us to be saints, and the pride of the Pharisee is a serious impediment to our recovery into sainthood. None of us can earn our place in the Kingdom of God by our own merits, and the virtue that the Pharisee displays is a fruit of the grace that God has poured out: the saving grace that the tax collector recognises. But the point is not to snivel before the Lord and accept our sinfulness as a station in life, but to accept the grace that will make us as virtuous as the Pharisee and then, by our co-operation with the work of Jesus through the sacraments, ever onward towards the perfection God wills for us. So we should join in the Jesus prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” But we should also join in the post-communion prayer that the Church in her ancient wisdom has prayed since at least the eighth century and now places on this Sunday every year, a perfect prayer that I always look forward to:
“May your Sacraments, O Lord, we pray, perfect in us what lies within them, that what we now celebrate in signs we may one day possess in truth. Through Christ our Lord, amen.”