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I’ve had a very rough week this week and I have found myself spending extra time in prayer. The Gospel this Sunday triggered some things about prayer that I had not thought about for a while, and I would briefly like to share them with you.
The first thing is that it is important that when we pray we must be honest and completely open with God; we must use real words that express how we feel and what is going on in our lives. Our relationship with God should be one place where we can let it all hang out – no safe and appropriate roles to play – no masks to hide behind.*Person in hospital – his brother has just died – yells & screams at the Cross – God is big enough to handle it.*

The second thing I was reminded about through the Gospel was that when I say I am too busy to pray (which I do at times), I may really be saying I am afraid to pray. Also, if I am so busy with what I want from God, I may miss what God really has to give me.
The third thing is, if we are to take prayer seriously we must dispel from our minds the notion that it is some kind of magic. Prayer is not an “Aladdin’s Lamp” which, if properly rubbed, will grant our every wish.
A student, rather lazily inclined, noticed that a classmate always recited her Spanish lessons well. One day he asked her, “How is it that you always recite your lessons so perfectly?”
“Before I study,” she told him, “I always pray that I may remember my lessons and repeat them well.”
“Do you?” asked the boy, somewhat surprised. “So that’s her secret method,” he thought. “Well, then, I’ll pray too.”
That night he prayed up a storm, recalling as many prayers as he could remember. However, the next day he could not even repeat one phrase of the lesson. Quite perplexed he looked for his friend, and, finding her, confronted her for being deceitful.
“I prayed,” he told her, “but I could not repeat a single phrase from yesterday’s homework.”
“Perhaps,” she told him, “you took no pains to learn the lesson!”
“Of course not,” said the boy. “I didn’t study at all. I had no reason to study. You told me to pray that I might remember the lesson.”
“There’s your problem,” she said, “I told you I prayed before, not instead of, studying.”
I close with a final thought on prayer: A friend of mine used to drop by his Church every evening around 5 PM, for an hour of meditation before supper. Every evening he noticed the same old man sitting in one of the back pews. The man was always there when he arrived and still there when he left. It began to haunt him.
One evening curiosity got the better of him and he approached the man, greeted him, and hoped he wasn’t praying: “I have seen you here for several months now, and I really admire your constant devotion. But I was wondering . . . I notice that you are always just sitting here quietly, never using a prayer book, Bible, or rosary . . . still obviously praying…I just wondered, when you pray to God, what do you say; what do you talk about . . . ?
The old man looked up at my friend calmly and gently: “I don’t talk to God; God talks to me.”
A lot of people think prayer (or meditation or religion or spirituality) is supposed to be like Alka Seltzers in a glass of water: non-stop, bubbly, effervescent, supernatural excitement. Wrong! Sometimes, maybe. But most of the time prayer is like any love relationship: it involves a lot of giving and listening. It’s like learning to talk: first, you have to listen, in the sure peace of God’s presence.

One night a father came to a parent-teacher conference in a Chicago high school. During a talk with one of his son’s teachers, the father broke down and began to cry. After he regained his composure, the father apologized, saying, “My son no longer lives with me.” “But I still love him, and I want to know how he’s doing in school.” The father then told the teacher how his wife and four children left him that afternoon. He was a building contractor and sometimes worked 16 hours a day. Naturally, he saw a little of his family, and they slowly grew farther and farther apart. Then the father said something sad. He said: “I wanted to buy my wife and kids all those things I had dreamed of giving them.” “But in the process I got so involved in working that I forgot about what they needed most; a father who was around at nights to give them love and support.” This story and our gospel today illustrates the same point. We can get so involved in what we are doing that we forget why we are doing it. We can get so involved in living that we forget the purpose of living. We can get so involved in pursuing the things money can buy that we forget about the things money can’t buy. It’s this kind of mistake that Martha made in today’s gospel. She got so involved in cooking a meal for Jesus that she forgot why Jesus had come. He didn’t come for a free meal. He came to be with friends. You and I live in a very fast-paced world. It’s so easy to lose our balance. It’s so easy to lose our perspective; it’s so easy to get our priorities mixed up. It’s so easy to lose sight of what we are doing and why we are doing it. During the World War II, a young soldier was stationed on the island of Saipan in the South Pacific. He said that during this time he and his friends used to go for swims in a secluded spot, just off the steep cliffs of the island. It was a lovely place surrounded by rocks. When they arrived, the water was so clear they could see fish ten feet below the surface. After they had swam for an hour, however the water became so clouded with sand, churned up from the bottom, that they couldn’t see a foot below the surface. But the next day when they returned for another swim the sand had settled. The water was crystal clear again. Our mind is like that water. It too can get so clouded up from the turmoil of everyday living that it’s hard for us to see clearly. We lose sight of everything; our perspective gets clouded; our priorities get confused; our balance gets destroyed. What we need to do when this happens is to pause and let the murky waters of the mind become clear again. We need to do what Mary did in today’s gospel. We need to sit at the feet of Jesus in quiet prayer. We need to let him teach us what is important and what is not. How do we do this? Practically let share with you a simple method of prayer. Each night before falling asleep, we take three minutes to do three things. During the first minute, we pause and do a mental replay of our day. We pick out the day’s high point, something we are happy about, like getting a letter from an old friend. Then, we speak to Jesus about it very sincerely. Finally, we conclude by giving thanks to Jesus for the letter and the friend. During the second minute, we do a second mental replay or our day. Only this time we pick out the low point in it, something we’re sorry about, like yelling at a parent, a spouse, or a child. We speak to Jesus about this weakness and ask him to forgive us and to heal us. Finally, during the third minute, we look ahead to tomorrow, to a critical point. We think of some difficult thing we must do, like talking to a parent, a spouse, or a child about a problem that has arisen. We speak to Jesus about it and ask his light and his strength in handling it. No matter how busy we are, three (3) minutes a day can put us in touch with life and in touch with Jesus. I close with a prayer for us busy people; Lord, Keep us from getting so involved in life that we forget why you gave us life. Keep us from getting so involved in living that we forget the purpose of living. Keep us from getting so involved in pursuing the things money can buy that we forget about the things money can’t buy.

The Unfortunate Victim
What’s happening to me? I was walking along, minding my own business; and now this….abandoned, rejected, left to die. Why don’t these people help me? They’re coming over (Priest & Levite)….now they’re leaving. They were only curious, not really interested or concerned. Death would be better than just lying here in pain, watching people pass me by. Who is this guy (the Samaritan)? Is he going to be like the others and treat me like I don’t exist? He is bending over. He must be up to something. I don’t trust him. He’s helping me! How different life looks!

The Priest
Ah, Yahweh, the Temple! What a glorious weekend it was! I can’t wait to tell my wife and neighbors tonight. Praise you, thank you for choosing me as your priest, unworthy as I am! I felt so humble within the awesome splendor of your temple! And when the high priest, Ol’ Annas, went into the Holy of Holies, Ooh, I almost swooned, for I felt my very soul being drawn within that inner sanctuary, to be one with you!!!!
Oh, oh, what’s that on the roadside? Looks like a body…it is! That’s the third one I’ve seen this year on this road! Poor soul! Curse those thieves, Yahweh, they not only rob a man, but murder him as well! Hmm, maybe I should go over to that ditch and see? No, if that Levite sees me too near that body, he’ll report me. Then I’ll be unable ever again to share in the temple services. I hope that the other stranger coming up the road doesn’t think I am calloused and cowardly. I am a Priest; I am simply following the law. How come then, Yahweh, I don’t feel justified…Hmmm?

The Levite
As he turned to the form on the road, he immediately noticed that there was a Samaritan not far behind him. “I know what’s going on, because it happened to friends of mine on this very same road”. The body was a plant, a perfectly healthy man who was to draw me to the side of the road and attack me. Then with the help of the Samaritan they would rob me, strip me, and leave me half dead. Praise the holy name for the glance over my shoulder and the wisdom that Yahweh gives me for protection. This day life has been spared in Israel. He hurried quickly along the road and even as he continued he noticed the Samaritan stop to speak with his accomplice lying at the side of the road.

The Samaritan
Oh that poor man. What in the world has happened to him? Have people just passed him by all day? There are lots of people who travel this path, and no one has stopped to help him. I’d better stop to see what I can do for him. What a mess his is in. Bleeding, bruises, black eyes, and he has been robbed. I’d better do something with him; I just cannot leave him here. I know what it is like to be neglected, to be left for dead; that is how people treat me so much of the time. I can see why people neglect me, I am a Samaritan, but why have they neglected this poor man. What is happening to people? I have really felt that neglect, and I know how terrible it is to be left for dead. I’m not going to let that happen to him. I’ll clean and dress his wounds, put him on my donkey and take him to the Inn down the road. I am not a rich man, but, I have a little money that should take care of him for a day or so. I can’t believe that people just pass him over. Maybe they should be in the position of desertion and aloneness once in awhile so they really know what it means to be down and out. People are just too concerned about what others are going to think if they do something out of the ordinary.