How many have not been in the position of today’s first reading and gospel? Praying through suffering that seems to have no end at times in our lives and at other times praying for more faith. When we do not see immediate results of the former, we consider the latter a moot point. If God did not answer my prayer, does He exist at all. What’s more, I challenge you to go out a local mulberry bush and tell it to move into your yard. What would be most interesting is that if you do not own the mulberry bush and it goes to your yard, is that considered stealing? Is there a law on the books against telling your neighbors mulberry bush to move into your yard and it does? I suspect not.

What is Jesus saying here.

First let’s look at Habbakuk. He is prophesying against the great injustices in Judah. Pagan religious practices are bountiful and as the writers of the New American Bible explain, political intrigue is high. Habbakuk is seeing this and asking where is God. There is a great scene from one of my favorite movies. It is my favorite because I am a big afficionado of the event. The Titanic. I cannot tell you everything there is to know about the Titanic, but I can tell you a lot. If you remember the movie, there is that scene where the now elder Rose reflects on what was going on and the crew of the ship seeking the Coeur de la Mer responds by realizing that no one knew what was about to happen. This beautiful ship was to sink taking the lives of 1500 souls including one martyr for the faith.

This is what is happening as we read Habbakuk. We see him lament of the injustice in Judah, be we know in a short time, less than a generation, Judah will be captured by the Babylonians. The injustice will be punished by the predecessors to the land many in the US today call Persia, but legally that land is called Iran and Iraq. So the prophet is saying why don’t you answer and we know that God is answering in his time, not ours. He answers in a way that to this day, the Babylonian exile is one of the keystone points in Jewish history.

We take that in light of the Gospel. If you had the faith the size of a mustard seed, etc. What Jesus is saying is that when you ask for something in accords with God’s will to be done, expect it to be done in His manner and in His way. But expect results. This is a hard saying because I can joke around about going to a mulberry bush and telling it to move and do we really expect that to happen. However, let me give you another situation which is more stark. A child is dying and the parents pray for his healing and it does not happen. “But Father we prayed, and it did not happen.” That is a stark reality that is much more serious than a mulberry bush and it happens. How do you respond?

Let us go back to Habbakuk. He prays and finds no answer immediately and in time we learn that God does act, but not in our time. In the case of the child, we know that God has a greater role for that child in the kingdom of Heaven than we can imagine. Yet, often those words do not comfort the parents. Habbakuk had to wait to see his prayers answered and see the fruit of God’s actions, so do we quite often have to wait with expectation when some of our most deepest and troubling questions are answered, in some cases in Heaven. Patience and perseverance are keystones to faith.

Know that God answers prayers but almost never in the way we expect. Even Habbakuk expects God to act one way. I am sure he did not expect the Babylonian exile to happen and no one expected the great event forty years later when Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon and sent the Jews back to the homeland in freedom.

There is the story of the man who went to the sea and prayed to be able to walk on water. He failed. Yet, he prayed and it did not happen. However, he learned an important lesson. It was not that God will not answer the prayer to walk on water, it was that He felt God speak to him saying that if he did walk on water, he would be so filled with pride his soul would be lost. God did answer his prayer but not as he expected. God answers all our prayers, but often not as we expect.

God Bless You

Fr. Robert J Carr

Fr. Carr is an alliance member of the New Song Community (Canção Nova). He is the pastor of St. Benedict Parish in Somerville, MA and is the editor of this blog. He is also the author of a blog directed specifically to priests. That can be found at thesacramentallife.blogspot.com

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