If you look carefully about today’s readings, you will not see an account of miracles as much as a display of the importance of prayer.
Let us focus on the first reading. You have the story of the Widow of Zarephath. Little is known about her except that she apparently was a prayerful woman who lived with her son during a drought in Zarephath. God instructs the most powerful prophet of the Old Testament: Elijah, to go to her, not for her benefit but for his. He asks her for a drink during this time and the she gives him a drink of water. He also asks for some food and she gives her some again out of her meager store in this time drought, sacrificially. He promises her that she will never be without food or drink during this time and indeed she never is.
But despite helping the prophet, her son becomes gravely ill and stops breathing, here she complains to the prophet that she is being punished for her sins. Elijah, immediately takes the boy to his room and then prays over him to bring him back to life. It is cited as one of the few times, if not the only time, outside of the New Testament that a prophet brings the dead back to life.
Notice, however, how she complains at first. She loses a sense of the love of God obviously with the death of her son and sees God in the same way the pagans see their gods as demanding beings that have no mercy and require human blood to be satisfied.
Hear this homily as it was delivered at Mass
Her complaint to Elijah shows her that the God of Judah is different than the pagan gods. If she did not complain to God’s representative, she would have seen God as no more than Ba’al, the the deity of the Phoenicians aka the Philistines the warring people we learned about last week.
She expresses her anger at Elijah’s God and gets a response. She does so angrily believing that she is being punished, although she helped and sacrificed for a prophet of this God. It is after she expresses her anger to Elijah that she sees the powerful loving God who heals her son.
In order to know someone you have to speak with them even when angry. God is no different. Prayer is an essential part of our lives and bringing to prayer our most difficult times is also essential. If we do not pray, we cannot know God. If we only pray when we need something that is not the best scenario, but it is better than not praying. It is one of the many reasons that attending Church is so important, it is the greatest way to come to know God.
It is when we bring all our needs and those of others to pray, that we come to know God more and that leads us to a deeper friendship with him and a deeper way of living the Catholic faith. Last week I gave to the Confirmation students a great book from St. Alphonsus Liguori called How to Converse with God. There he gives instruction of how we can pray in powerful ways. The best way is to talk with God as we would with another bringing into our conversation all our concerns, struggles, worries, pains, successes, failures, etc. It is to speak with the Lord on a daily basis in order to come to have that deeper relationship with the Lord and to bring all our concerns joys to the Lord.
When we don’t do that then as we see in the Widow of Zarephath, we lose the sense of who God actually is and in her case she sees God as this overpowering demanding pagan bloodthirsty God. If that image doesn’t look familiar to you the I can sum it up in 2 words: Catholic guilt.
What does Catholic guilt look like? It looks like one is living under this Pagan bloodthirsty demanding god who is just waiting to cast someone into hell because he has nothing else to do and if we are not perfect then God is going to cast us into hell. That is the oppressive work of Catholic guilt. It is a false understanding of God. Our Lord does all He can to bring us to Heaven, we only have to co-operate with His grace in this life and He will bring us to the next. That is what the saints teach.
The more we pray, and the more we read scripture, we will see more and more what kind of God that we serve and realize the ancient image that is even common today of the overpowering blood thirsty God is vastly incorrect. Further, God often answers our prayers in ways that our beyond our expectations or plans. So we learn that he is not a blood thirsty pagan god, but a loving God who acts beyond our expectations.
When we pray, and pray bringing to God everything that we deal with in our lives, as St. Alphonsus teaches, actually sharing and asking assistance in everything we do, we discover God revealing who he truly is.
Praying for miracles is also part of what we do as well. One of the greatest problems in the Church in Boston is that we are so education focused we sometimes push faith out of our lives. Education is important, (remember I have a Master of Divinity Degree. I also studied at Boston College and Harvard University) but we are people of faith and reason. If we exclude faith in our reasoning or for that matter exclude reasoning in our faith we are not living as Catholics. Therefore, praying for miracles is an essential part of our lives as Catholics. Praying for that new job, for that help with debt, for the success of your children but most of all praying for the salvation ourselves of loved ones and even enemies is a central part of what it means to be Catholic and people of prayer.
When do we stop praying, when our ultimate prayers are answered as we enter the gates of Heaven.
The widow learned that her impression of God was wrong, through speaking out to His representative, but we can speak directly to the Lord as did Elijah, we were given that right at our baptism.
He speaks to us as well at Mass in our daily prayer and bible reading, spiritual reading, especially in the summer and there as did the widow of Zarephath, we learn of God more and more daily.
God bless you,
Fr. Robert J Carr
Fr. Carr is member of the Segundo Elo of the Canção Nova Community. He is the pastor of Holy Trinity Quincy, MAand is the editor of this blog. He is the author of several books, blogs and hundreds of videos all of which you may find on Youtube. You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr and on Google plus as+FrRobertCarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook