Homily

One of Bishop Benedict’s goals for our future is to increase the amount of prayer in the eparchy, both the prayer together in public worship as well as the prayer as family in each home and the prayer of each individual Christian. He wrote a few thoughts down so I’d like to share some of them with you.

Bishop says that without prayer we are like smart phones without access to the internet. We can still act and even do some good, but without that access we are severely limited and not able to perform the way we were meant to perform. We live in a material world and it is always so easy to let materialism guide our way of looking at life. We think and act in fragmentary ways, guided by our subjective understanding, not able to really see the whole picture and our place within it. It is not a surprise then we cut ourselves off from the source of Life and Truth by not praying, or praying very little, that we have conflicts and sadness, troubles and doubts. One of the reasons we might avoid prayer is because when we stand face to face with God, so to speak, He is like a mirror that reflects back to us who we really are, and that’s a picture we do not care to see. But unless we see ourselves as we really are we cannot ask the Lord to help us become who we ought to be, and who He created us to be, and who He desires us to be, the people who live deeply in the divine life, the people whose lives are shaped by and fueled by the divine love.

We see this in today’s Gospel. What’s more important—being able to walk again, or having your sins forgiven? Of course, we will say, “having our sins forgiven” because we know that’s what we are supposed to say, but if you were that same person here today, laying on a pallet, paralyzed, honestly and truly would you choose a physical cure or a moral, spiritual cure? Materialism is not just about having things and loving things. It’s also about the way we see and the way we live our lives. Do we live for this world or for the Kingdom of God? Are we guided by grace or by our own opinions and ideas?

Bishop writes that the average parishioner spends an hour in church on Sunday, 5 minutes for morning prayer and 5 minutes for evening prayer and maybe a bit more, let’s say 3.5 hours of prayer every week out of 168 hours available to us. That means we spend 3% of our week on God and we dedicate 97% of our time to the affairs of life on this earth which we will leave. And when I read this part I thought, “Bishop, you don’t take into account the time we need to sleep when you say we only spend 3% of our week on God.” And then I asked myself why I was so defensive and how does that really change his point? Does that really make a difference? It would make us look better, not BE better.

Bishop writes, “As I pray I become more open to God and His light enlightens me. Then I become aware of what I have to do, how I should live, which strategies to choose, what work I must do, where to speak and where to remain silent, where to look and cover over the imperfect acts of others with love. When we pray we understand not only that God is there, we receive a new experience of God. He has all knowledge and the answers to our questions, how and when we ought to do and when not to do. When we pray we become more deeply united with the Lord, and from Him we personally see what we ought to do. Since each one of us addresses the same God, then this Lord says and reveals the same things to us, individually, and as a family, a parish, an eparchy, a Church.”

And I find this last point very interesting. God does not have different truths for each person, or different goals for each person. Same truth, same goals, same divine life, even though we are each individuals with our specific and unique souls. Same truth, same goals, same divine life. When prayer opens us more and more to the living God we see this more clearly, and we, each of us, discover better how we personally can enter more deeply into that truth, live more sincerely according to that goal, embrace more completely that divine life. When we all do that we end up with harmony and unity. Imagine what it would be like in our families if every person was deeply committed to prayer. How would that change family life and our relations to each person in our homes? I can hear your objections: “You’ll never get Mantea and Ivan to pray any more than they do now, if they pray at all.” Well, it may be true, but shouldn’t you pray about and for that? And even if THEY never do, how much better will you be with them if you increase your own prayer?

These are some thoughts. Let’s pray more this Lent. Let’s take more and make more time to set aside our earthly cares in favor of spending more time with the King of All.