Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Poor Job is having a really bad day. He speaks of life as drudgery, misery, and restlessness… and closes by saying “I shall not see happiness again.” Sounds like he’s describing February in Vermont.

Many of us have experienced some of what he describes, even those who love the Winter. While we might not share Job’s misery, drudgery, or restlessness, our own life experiences might be more like
+ anxiety
+ stress
+ disappointment
+ disillusionment

many people speak of feeling:
+ alone
+ unappreciated
+ misunderstood
+ even unloved.

What shall we do? Bring all of these egregious experiences to prayer, and share them with The Lord. While He might not change the situations of our lives, His grace can change the way we experience those situations. Look, for example, at Saint Peter’s mother-in-law: Saint Mark tells us that Jesus approached… grasped her hand… and helped her up. He cured her of her illness, but her immediate life-situation did not change: she still had a houseful of guests to wait upon.

In our prayer, we can allow Jesus to approach us… grasp us by the hand… and help us up… not necessarily by changing the present situation, but by entering into the situation with us, and giving us the Grace we need for the moment.

In this, Jesus becomes both the doctor and the cure.

We see in the life of Christ several occasions where He goes off to pray, as we heard in today’s Gospel. One might think that the Son of God, in constant communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit, would never experience a need for prayer, as we do. Yet, because of the Hypostatic Union within Him, (being both fully human and fully divine) He experiences the human need for prayer.

The Gospel stories which reveal the more significant moments in His Public Life such as the Calling of the Disciples,…His miracles… begin in a similar manner:
“He came down from the mountain…”
“He came in from the desert..”

There he was absorbed in prayer and energized by that prayer to effect His ministry with supernatural power and Grace.

Our Lord, who, as we profess: “…became like us in all things but sin…" experiences in His humanity some of the consequences of our sin. Untouched by Sin, Original or Actual, He nonetheless experiences first-hand, the ultimate human reality that Man lacks something. That lack, of course, is communion with the Father.

Our own efforts can only go so far to restore this communion, this loss; only Grace can do this with the fullness we desire. Sanctifying Grace comes to us through prayer and the Sacraments, healing us from the consequences of sin and restoring us to union with God.

We believe that God created Man in His own image… and an image cannot be in contradiction with what it represents. That which has the power to contradict God’s image within Man is sin. Therefore, God seeks to correct this contradiction by overcoming, by absolving our sin with the fullness of His mercy and His love.

So, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, assumes human nature just as He happens to find it: sinful, needy, too weak to overcome sin. He takes us as we are into His prayer, whether that be
+ forty days in the desert
+ sweating blood at Gethsemane…

… and, ultimately suffering the consequences of our sin upon the Cross… where even there He prays, “Father, forgive them…”

Our own prayer, then, is a participation in this Mystery. The discontinuity, the separation we feel from God is overcome in the Mystery of the Cross. And now, this mystery is re-presented for us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Upon this altar, the sacred mystery of the Cross is continued outside the strictures of space and time, and, therefore is not merely re-enacted, but is one and the same sacrifice offered by Christ on Calvary.

We present our sinful selves as we recall in the Penitential rite, and as we present our real human needs as we pray for them in the General Intercessions… and then unite them with the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross making the Mass “the Perfect Prayer.” Our subjective participation in the Mass unites us with the objective presence of God, and brings transformation to the human soul. The subject — that is — the person becomes present to the object — that is — the real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, so that this objectivity can actually penetrate the believer’s entire being: body and mind, heart and soul.

As a result, the believer grows and changes with the objective truth of Christ’s Real Presence, and this Communion with the Absolute changes the way the believer experiences life, going forward.

Simply stated, “Prayer changes things.”

At this Mass, Christ takes our selves, our humanity, and even our sin with Him into prayer, where, in our fallen condition, we are drawn into the holiness of God: our deepest longing and our ultimate destiny. Encountering God in prayer is, then, a more profoundly human experience than encountering the world in thought and study, or in interaction with others, because prayer points us to our ultimate reason for being human, which is temporal and eternal union with God.

So, Christ did not build His Church in such a way that it would be accessible to only a few select souls who live in complete purity of Faith. He founded His Church as a union of saints and sinners all striving individually and together toward union with God.

This is why He has given us the Eucharist: to be present to us in our struggles toward purity, charity and holiness, renewing us in His Grace. And so we continue to pray, inside and outside the church, whether they be prayers of praise and adoration, or petition and gratitude, for all prayer is good.

When we begin to experience Job’s misery, drudgery, or restlessness… and fear we should never see happiness again, we should turn to prayer in which not only do we seek God, but God seeks us, and grants us grace to live in the imperfection of the human condition, but with the Lord leading us.

Let’s close with a prayer from Saint Augustine: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”