23rd Sunday after Pentecost 12.11.06 Total trust
The Gospel presents us with two different ways of asking Our Lord for help. One man insists on His personal attendance at the scene of the trouble; one woman is content to pray just by touching, without saying a word.
Both receive what they want. We sense that the woman’s faith is stronger than the man’s, but from both we learn again that Our Lord is willing to hear our prayers, and we should keep them coming.
Our Lord is pleased whenever He encounters above average faith. He commends this woman who touched His garment. He commends the centurion who trusted that Our Lord could heal from a distance. He commends the Canaanite woman who persisted in her prayers despite apparent rejection.
He tells us to be like the importunate widow who would not give up until the unjust judge gave her what she needed.
O we of little faith are more likely to give up too soon, or expect too little of Our Lord.
We can be too tentative in our prayer, not really expecting anything good to happen.
Why do we give up so easily? There are a couple of major barriers we need to get across.
1) Lack of trust. We are not convinced enough of God’s love for us, His closeness to us, or even (sometimes) His existence.
We allow our experience of suffering and disappointment to dent our trust in God. If He would allow me to go through suffering then is He really my friend?
So we either stop praying altogether or pray only half-heartedly and sporadically.
This does not express or engender faith. If we do not ask we do not receive, or not as much anyway.
2) Lack of knowledge of God’s will. Supposing we do still trust Him to a fairly high degree. The problem can then be that we do not know what He is planning; what is His will for the particular problem we confront.
We believe He has the power to do anything; we are just not sure what He wants to do in this case. For example, a prayer for the healing of someone with a terminal illness.
So we tend to be less forthright in asking than we would like – out of a kind of deference to God’s will. Yet He does want us to ask for things. Ask and you shall receive.
He wants us to discern His will and approach Him with confidence.
It is all a matter of trust. He wants us to get so close to Him that when we pray we are not shouting across a great canyon in the hope that He might hear us, but rather whispering in intimate confidence, knowing that He does hear us.
Look at Our Lady at Cana, and how she made that prayer. She approached Jesus quietly and confidently. She did not have to shout the prayer. She did not have to explain what she meant. She just put it before Him knowing that He would be in sympathy with her feelings on the matter.
So the miracle was worked. If we need a miracle this is how to ask for it. We don’t have to make a lot of noise, but just develop an enduring sense of trust.
Come close to Him every day, and every day closer than the one before.
We do not always know what He is going to do, but we do know that it will be something good.
In many ways the state of perfect trust in God is itself the answer to the prayer. When we love Him that much we are filled with His grace and that is really better than any earthly advantage we might otherwise be seeking.
Also when we do trust Him that much our prayer is going to work much better because it will be prayed in strong faith (like the woman, the centurion, Our Lady etc).
So to advance in trust, until we reach total trust. Any lack of trust can be part of our prayer: Lord, help my unbelief.
Any previous disappointment or disenchantment with Him: ask Him to heal it, to reassure us that He has never been absent from our sides.
Then, together, we draw close, and miracles will happen.
