My name is Don and I’ve been a Catholic priest now for over 50 years, and during that time I keep going back to the same readings over and over again, only to discover that they contain something I never understood was there before. It gives me new enthusiasm and excitement for the message that keeps revealing itself, and I pray that the message that I’m sending you will be valuable, and if you find it so, please share these podcasts with your friends. Thank you. Good morning. Today we celebrate the 17th Sunday in Ordinary time, the opening prayer. O God, protector of those who hope in you, without whom nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy, bestow in abundance your mercy upon us and grant that with you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.

Amen. A reading from the book of Genesis, 18th chapter, 20th to the 32nd verse. In those days the Lord said, the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, their sins so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out. While Abraham’s visitors walked on farther toward Sodom, the Lord remained standing before Abraham, and Abraham drew near and said, will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? Suppose there were 50 innocent people in the city, would you wipe out the place rather than spare it for the sake of the 50 innocent people within it?

Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty, so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike. Should not the Judge of all act with justice? The Lord replied, If I find 50 innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake. Abraham spoke up again, see how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes. Where if there are five less than 50 innocent people, will you destroy the whole city because of those five? He answered, I will not destroy it if I find 45 there.

But Abraham persisted, saying, what if only 40 are found there? He replied, I will forbear doing it for the sake of the 40. Then Abraham said, let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on. What if only 30 are found there? He replied, I will forbear doing it if I can find but 30 there. Still.

Abraham went on, since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord. What if there are no more than 20? The Lord answered, I will not destroy it for the sake of the 20. But he still persisted. Please let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time. What if there are at least 10 there?

He replied, for the sake of those 10, I will not destroy it. The Word of the Lord Responsorial Psalm Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me. I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth. In the presence of the angels I will sing your praise. I’ll worship and at your holy temple and give thanks to your name. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.

Because of your kindness and your truth, you have made great among many things, your name and your promise. When I call, you answered me. You built up my strength within me. Lord, of the day I called for help, you answered me. The Lord is exalted, yet the lowly he sees and the proud he knows from afar though I walk amid distress, you preserve me against the anger of my enemies. You raise your hand, Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.

Your right hand saves me. Lord will complete what he has done for me. Your kindness, O Lord, endures forever. Forsake not the work of your hands, Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me. A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, second chapter 1214 brothers and sisters, you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

And even when you were dead, in transgressions, in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us our transgressions, obliterating the bond against us with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross, the word of the Lord. Hallelujah. Verse you have received a spirit of adoption through which we cry, Abba, Father. Hallelujah. The reading for this Sunday is taken from St. Luke, 11th chapter, first through the 13th verse.

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, lord, teach us to pray. Just as John taught his disciples, he said to them, when you pray, say, father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test and he said to them, suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. For a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey, and I have nothing to offer him. He says in reply, from within, do not bother me. The door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed.

I cannot get up to give you anything. I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence. And I tell you, ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and one who seeks, finds.

And the one who knocks the door will be opened. Whatever father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish, or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg. If you, then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? The Gospel of the Lord Sam Sa there’s something so incredibly encouraging and hopeful in this set of readings, and I’m praying I can get you in touch with it because I know how much I need it, and I know most of you need it. Because one of the things we struggle with throughout life is a recognition of our weaknesses, our failings, our inability to do what we think we should be doing, or feeling we’re missing the mark. I guess there’s two things that we get in trouble with in our relationship with God and ourselves is either we’re too full of ourselves, thinking we don’t need anything or anybody.

We’re autonomous, we can handle everything. That’s one extreme. The other is, and this is actually the more beneficial one is we don’t feel we’re enough. We feel we miss the mark. We feel we’ve failed. And that feeling of failure is a very interesting sense of something about being human.

And that is, it’s healthy in the sense that what we’re dealing with in our relationship with God is a relationship wherein he longs to. To be a part of who we are. He wants us to know that the thing that we’re here for, the work that we have to do, is not something we’re supposed to do on our own. We’re supposed to do it in partnership, in partnership with him, with God Himself, displayed to us in this beautiful figure of Jesus, who was there to do what Paul says so beautifully. He comes to us in our imperfection, in our brokenness, in. In our least valued state, in our own sense of ourselves.

And then there he gives us everything we need. Forgiveness, life, mercy. He loves us in our imperfection. Yet so often that imperfection makes us not only feel unworthy of what we should be, you know, we not only feel that we’re missing the mark for doing the wrong thing or not doing enough, but then we have this double whammy of then feeling God is separated from us, distant from us. It’s called shame. It’s a killer.

It’s awful. But it has a benefit, a little gift at the end if you pay attention. Because what it does, it awakens in us a realization that we aren’t enough and that that’s the way. And this is the mystery to feel this mystery that we are not supposed to be enough. And that when we’re not enough, instead of wallowing self pity, we need to move into a direction that this whole set of readings is about. And that is to persistently, continuously, hopefully turning to God over and over and over again and asking him for what we need.

We need Him. His spirit, his life in us. That’s our daily bread. So the first reading is really interesting about this relationship that God establishes with Abraham because they no longer become close. And then Abraham turns around and starts demanding, not demanding, but at least suggesting to God that he not be so tough on people. It’s interesting that he’s got this sort of, you know, I don’t know, sense of his, hey, I’ve got to in with God, I can ask him to change and do things for me and do things differently.

And, and it’s interesting. It’s. It’s kind of presented as a, as a virtue, persistence. And it is because it’s grounded in one simple thing that when you turn to God and ask him for something, if you listen to the rest of the readings, it’s clear. He comes to us in our sinfulness, filled with the desire to give us every single thing we need. That’s called redemption.

Unmerited love, mercy. So when we’re not enough, we’re encouraged to do one very simple thing. Turn to God and ask him for what you need. That’s the key. And when you do that, you have to do it with two things, absolutely perseverance, grounded in hope and a realization of what it is that we go through. When we ask God for something, there’s a mystery of how to deal with it.

And it’s beautifully presented in the gospel because we’ve looked at the longing of disciples to know how to pray to God. That’s a very simple thing. And Jesus says, all right, this is the way you do. You pray to God by recognizing who he is. And one of the most beautiful things about him is that he is there to give you your daily bread and to forgive you, which is part of that bread, that acceptance of who you are as you are. And so you’re looking at this prayer for life being poured into you by the Father.

And all you’re asked to do is to return it to other people. And the best image of the way we love each other is forgiveness. Loving people not because they deserve it, but because that’s who you are and that’s who God is in you. So how do you get this daily bread? Well, the beautiful thing about the parable he gives, it’s about a man who needs bread and he comes to the person who can give it to him. So that’s an image of us when we recognize we don’t have enough bread for the things that we need to accomplish.

We don’t have enough energy, insight, wisdom, forgiveness. In our heart. You turn to this figure who is then represented by sort of being asleep, which is the way most God people think. God isn’t really that present. You know, we tend to get so busy with what we’re doing, concerned with ourselves. We’re not even thinking about Him.

And so I love this image that this. When we’re in trouble, when we’re really in need and we want something, we turn to God. And he’s going to answer us, but he’s asking for persistence. Well, why doesn’t he answer us right away? Why doesn’t he say, sure, yes, I’ll fix it. No, there’s a process that he’s going to use, invite us into, that enables us to receive the gift that we’re seeking.

He’s not going to just fix us because we asked. He’s going to take you through a process, and the process is called transformation. In fact, we don’t really want to be just given things. That’s the story of Adam and Eve. They wanted to work for things. And we do want to be engaged in the work that changes us and transforms us.

And so he said, the first thing you do is you ask. And when you’re asking for something, it seems so clear that what you’re doing is you’re saying, father, I need this. I don’t have it. I must use. You’ve got to help me. I want something that I can’t get on my own.

And so let’s just say there’s something blocked inside of me, keeping me from the source of life that I need to have. And there’s so many images we could have about our own growth and development and evolution as a human being that we find ourselves constantly engaged in sometimes repairing the damage that’s been done to us or the things that we miss learning and, and they’re sort of like these things that are hidden from us. Gems of wisdom, gems of understanding ourselves. And when we ask God, take me out of the pain and the emptiness, I feel he’s going to say, okay, I will do that, but here’s what you got to do on your part. Ask me to help and then seek. Seek what it is that I want to give you.

Figure it out. Find it. It’s interesting that he asks. First you ask for a favor, a gift from God, and then he goes seek it. Well, if God knows what we need before we do, he wants us to know what it is. So you seek it.

And it’s interesting about the word seek. It’s different than the word search. He doesn’t say go searching for the answer because a search is looking for something. You already know what it is. Like you need a certain answer to a certain problem or you lost your pen, or you lost your clip ons and you’re looking for them and you’re searching for them. No, seeking is more mysterious.

It’s looking for something that you don’t even know what it is, but it’s out there. And if you know that God is there to reveal it to you, your openness is saying, whatever it is, show me, I’m willing to see it. I want to find out what’s missing in me. And that process takes time, reflection, conversations with other people. Sometimes it takes a therapist, sometimes it takes some, some, some anti, you know, whatever, depressants or something. But it’s like working to get to the heart of who you are and what it is you are missing in your life.

Something is separated from you that needs to be there. So you look for it. And that’s the painful part. But here’s the key. Hope, which is a form of persistence. You’re not looking for it, hoping it’ll be there and wondering if it will.

And if it’s not, then you don’t know what you’re going to do. That’s not going to work. You have to do it knowing God will reveal to you the, the thing that you need to be in touch with. He will Give you what you need. As Jesus said, if parent knows how to give their child what they need. And God is listening to your prayer, knowing you’re his child and you’re wanting something, and God knows what it is, and he wants you to help.

He wants you to see it. Then he said, I’ll help you see it. And then there’s this crazy thing. You find it and you find it. Something that is there, that is locked, something that you can’t get to, but you know what it is. I don’t have enough trust in you, God.

I don’t have enough belief in myself. I’m listening to all the negative voices in me, and I won’t counter them because I think they’re right. Something like that is going on. And the answer when you see it is to knock. I love that image because think of it as something that’s hidden from you, that you’re separate from. It’s like having a part of yourself that didn’t grow up and didn’t evolve enough and didn’t become what it was supposed to be.

And then you see it, and then what you want is you want it to be healed. And that’s when you knock. And the interesting thing about knocking is it’s. You recognize, I found it, but you don’t have to open it. It’s locked. And that’s the moment when God does his miracle.

He unlocks it for you. He opens the door, you see the flaw, the mistake, the lie that you’ve been living with, the mistake you’ve been making, the thing that’s kept you from the peace that is your inheritance. And you see it and it’s. It’s seen and healed at the same moment. But the knocking is your work. The seeking, the looking, the pounding, wanting to find it and finding it, wanting it to be open for you.

What a gift to believe in this process and how beautiful it is that God would say to you, you know, it’s the bread that I am that I want you to feel inside of you. It is always available to you, but it’s blocked so often by trauma, by damaged experiences, by lies being poured into you when you’re too young to discern they’re not really lies and they become a part of you. All of that is so, so real in terms of your journey. And if you’re feeling that when you’re crying out to God there’s something wrong, you should have not. You should have had it figured out before you cried out. That’s sometimes what I feel like I should have it all together because God has blessed me with whatever ordination or some baptism or something.

I’m supposed to get it all. I’m supposed to be cleansed of everything wrong. No, no. It’s a process. And the process is something that is not easy. But it has two ingredients that are essential.

Belief that no matter how far you’ve been or how bad you’ve been, God has no way of limiting anything from you. It’s little in his eyes because it’s big in our eyes, but it’s forgotten by God by the time you’ve done it. You’re forgiven, which means you deserve everything. And then you deserve an answer to your prayer, which is the grace of insight and awareness and consciousness connected with a conviction that this insight that you find that’s there is going to become part of you. It’s like a part of you that’s been enclosed and dark and without light. And you knock on it, it opens, the light enters and you’re renew Sam Sa Sam the Closing Prayer Father, you promise us the gift of life which can be seen as the gift of your light.

You’re enlightening us, seeing through the darkness into the darkness and finding the treasure that’s hidden there. Bless us with this process of responding to your invitation to find the newness of life that is your promise. That is our inheritance. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. The music in this program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner. I’m excited for the opportunity to awaken your spiritual journey.

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