BE HUMBLE IN PRAYER
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time/Mission Sunday (23/10/2022)
(Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; Psalm 34:2-3, 17-18, 19, 23; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14)
By Fr. Samuel Odeh
Last Sunday’s readings were about praying without getting tired. This Sunday is about our attitude in prayer. In our first reading today we read: The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds…. We meet God in prayer only when we acknowledge our poverty and total dependence on him. This is because God is on the side of the poor and defenseless and not on the side of those who are full of themselves and feel deserving of God’s justice.
In our Gospel reading for today Jesus tells the parable that compares and contrasts the prayer of a Pharisee and a tax collector. In this parable Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray in humility. The Pharisee in the eyes of the people were devout and strict Jews. If anyone should be a model of prayer it should be a Pharisee. Yet our Lord rejects his kind of prayer and prefers instead the prayer of the corrupt and dishonest tax collector who collaborated with the foreign Roman colonizers and overcharged taxes. The tax collector acknowledged his poverty before God whose eyes penetrate hearts and minds and know our true feelings and inner dispositions. The righteousness that pleases God is first of all humble. The prayer of the disciple of Christ Jesus should resemble the prayer of the tax collector in today’s Gospel. We should always be aware of our need for God in our lives so that his grace can work in us.
In our second reading St Paul tells Timothy that he had been abandoned by everyone when he was arrested but God stood by him and gave him strength. Thanks to God’s faithful presence in his life St Paul believed in a crown he would receive from him. This crown is also promised to us if we remain humble in heart.
Mission Sunday Gospel Reading: Luke 24: 46-48
Our alternative Gospel reading chosen for today, which is also World Mission Sunday, is taken from the last chapter of Luke and is an account of the risen Jesus giving his disciples instructions before ascending into heaven. He tells them his suffering and death and resurrection were events promised beforehand in the Scriptures. He calls them witnesses to these things. Like the disciples we also through our faith in the risen Jesus and through our faith as Church are charged to proclaim this message to all the world. Christ sends us into the world and it is for this work of witnessing Christ that we gather to celebrate this Sunday. Let us ask the Lord of the harvest to accept our gifts and talents for the work of spreading his Gospel.
