Wednesday in the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle I
Jon 4,1-11; Lk 11, 1-4
It is a known fact that relationships are being threatened because people are no longer finding time to put work and distractions aside in order to spend quality time together. This reality is affecting not only married couples but also families in general and relationships such as friendships and religious communities. Our relationship with God is no different from any other relationship. Here is where the importance of prayer comes in.
Just as two persons who want their relationship to grow and to flourish decide on a time and place where to meet in order to talk about their hopes and dreams, their fears and anxieties, in the same way we must decide on a time and a place where to be alone with God.
In today's first reading from the Book of Jonah and in the gospel we have two prayers, yet they are very different. Jonah's is a prayer of disappointment and remorse. As we have been reading over the past few days, Jonah was sent by God to Nineveh, a pagan people, calling them to repentance. Jonah however believes that since they do not form part of the People of Israel, they are bad people that they will never repent. He is surprised to see that as soon as he starts - very reluctantly - to preach repentance, they immediately repent. But instead of being happy for them that they have repented, his heart grows bitter. He is envious for the mercy that God has shown towards these people who in his eyes were bad people. He realises that his desires were not in order. The plant that grew on its own but which then withered symbolises his own heart.
With Jonah we learn an important lesson about prayer: many a time we pray to be in control of everything: in control of our own suffering, we pray to feel that we are in control of our own emotions, even to be in control of our relationship with God. With Jonah we realise that the only one who is in control is God himself. All our fears and all our suffering are already in the hands of God.
We are privileged to have recorded the very same words that Jesus used to pray to his Father. From it we learn how our relationship with God must be as that of a child with his or her Father. To pray is to abandon oneself into the Father's arms. The words "Your will be done" must not only be a formula that we recite but something that we believe in and which we show with our way of living.
Today, as we celebrate the feast of St John XXIII, we recall his own spiritual journey which we learn about through his own spiritual journal, "Journal of a Soul." There we read how he too grew in this trust in the loving Father abandoning himself in his the Father's will and which allowed him to bear fruit throughout his life at a time when the Church and the entire world was passing through moments of turmoil.
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