16th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle A 22-23
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19 | Romans 8:26-27 | Matthew 13:24-43
Show favor, oh Lord, to your servants, and mercifully increase the gifts of your grace that, made fervent in hope, faith and charity, they may be ever watchful in keeping your commands. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
The God of the Old Testament is always tricky in the sense that God is not fully revealed until the very end of the story, but there are hint after hint of the fullness of who God is in Jesus that are there in the Old Testament. And this is one of them from Wisdom when it says the work of God in this world is not to reward the good and punish the evil but to care for people, all of them, saints and sinners. God’s work is to care for each individual creation that he has made, and what’s so important about that is to know that there is judgment, yes, and condemnation. But that’s a punishment that comes into the world, because sin has a negative impact, and the negative impact is going to be felt. And that’s called punishment. So we have to learn how to deal with evil. That’s one of the key things in the parable you just listened to. Evil and good grow together, and only at the end can we separate them. We can’t get rid of evil. God did not cause it, but God allowed it to be there. So we deal with the world as it is, and it is filled with people who are good and loving and evil and destructive. And what is our job? To support and pray for those that are good and to wish the condemnation and the separation of those that are bad? No, something much more mysterious: to love sinners, to pray for them, to long for their conversion, that their eyes be opened, hearts understand.
So when I think about this, I’m thinking about the way in which people come up to me and ask me to pray for something. Maybe I want to pray for something or somebody ⎯ one of the things that’s interesting, people come up to me and say, “Your prayers are more effective than mine. Would you pray for this?” And whenever they’re giving me that direction, it’s usually to pray that God will do something for someone or for them, and when you think about it, why are we praying to God to ask him to care for us? Isn’t that who he is? Does it make any sense to try to convince God to do something good for someone, or is it that God isn’t aware of everybody’s needs, and we pray and say, “Remember so-and-so? You made them, and they live in somewhere. They need you right now. You may not realize that, but I want you to draw your attention over there.” All that is just natural, human nature laying on God our nature. There is a connection between our nature and God, but it’s not that. It’s somehow that, when we don’t know how to pray, it’s because we don’t really understand who God is and how he works. How does he care for people? What’s the kingdom like?
We pray in the Our Father for the kingdom to come, and what it is, we’re praying, “This kingdom will be something where everything that is done there is your will. Your intention is honored, and we join our intention with your intention.” And the reason that’s important is because the next part of the prayer is, “Give us yourself, the daily bread, the nourishment, the host, Jesus inside of us, God inside of us, and make us forgiving people.” So listen to that again. The kingdom of God is people who have God inside of them, and they, on their part, have the same intention toward the world that God has, intention. Prayer is an intention.
Quantum physics is a very fascinating field. It discovers new things about the nature of the way the world works, and the most amazing, most recent discovery is somehow intention can change matter, that when you intend something, it has an impact on someone. If you intend someone to receive something good, if you want to be something good for someone, if you want to be life for someone, you are giving life. If you want to reject someone, if you’re angry at someone and you want something bad to happen to that person because of what they did to you, if you have that, that’s an intention that has an impact, and it works. It’s terrifying to think that our prayers are often confusing to God, for one minute we’re praying for something good, and the next, we’re praying for something evil.
So what do we do? We learn how to pray, and if you could imagine what it would be like in the world today if everyone decided, instead of judging and condemning and separating ourselves from those that are not who they should be, instead of being disgusted by people who have done horrible things and wishing they had never been born, when we change that intention into something ⎯ look, we understand that God came into the world and saved the world through a human being. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he just come as God? Well, everything God does through Jesus is exactly what he wants us to do through Jesus. He was a healer. He had intention that didn’t even always have to be expressed. It just resonated out of his body so people could even just touch part of his garment and be healed. He was the resonance of care for all, the good, the bad, everyone, and he changed the world. And if you just believe that that is what prayer is, I guarantee you you’ll find an amazing sense of peace coming over you, because you are changing the world by your intention. And all you need to do more than actually praying more is to make sure the prayers that you give are really the prayer of God, the will of God, that “I want everyone to be opened and to see and to change and to grow. I don’t want to condemn anybody. I just want life to be lived to the fullest.” And that is an easy prayer, and if you did that once, twice, three times a day just with a simple intention, “I want that,” ⎯ pay attention. When you want to condemn and judge, don’t judge yourself as negative for that, because that’s what human nature does. Just excuse it. Thank it for its message and say, “No, I’m not interested in condemning and judging, comparing myself, being envious of others. No, I want us all to have life.” That’s my intention. That’s my prayer, and that will change the world. Amen.
Father, make us more like your Son. Help us to be Christ in this world, an anointing of truth and life and light. Help us to be that so we can call ourselves truly servants of you, our God, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.