A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Our lord spoke this parable addressed to those who believed in their own self righteousness while holding everyone else under contempt. Two men went up to the temple in Jerusalem to pray. Now one was a Pharisee, the other a tax collector, Publicanus. The Pharisee, with his head unbowed, prayed in this fashion.
I give you thanks, oh god, that I am not like the rest of men, grasping, crooked, adulterous, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes, one tenth of all I possess. Now the publican, the other man, kept his distance, not even daring to raise his eyes to heaven. All he did was to beat his breast and say, oh god, be merciful to me, the sinner.
Notice I put a the in there because that's in the Greek. He's in other words, he's thinking of himself as the sinner of the world. That's a little point, but it's very significant. Believe me, our lord then concludes. This man, the publican, the sinner, went home from the temple justified, but the other, that's the pharisee, did not.
For everyone who exalts himself, that man shall be humbled. While he who humbles himself, that man shall be exalted. And this is the gospel of the lord. Now I've chosen a text, but it's not from Saint Luke. It's from Saint Matthew, but it has to do with prayer, and you can't miss it.
That's the subject matter of today's reading and, yes, in last week's reading. And our lord Dennis Saint Matthew is speaking as follows. In praying, do not babble as the Gentiles do, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, but go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your heavenly father in secret. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
Now this is a vast subject, this matter of prayer. And it's so vast that it's it's much it's much easier to skip it, to talk about something very odd realm, something contemporaneous. Well, there's let me tell you. To be a Christian, if we even remotely try to be Christians, there is nothing so proximate, so immediate, so urgent, so absolutely inescapable if we wanna be Christians as prayer. And yet of the comments that I heard about my well chosen remarks last Sunday was was this, you certainly you certainly thought you certainly expressed my mind that prayer is difficult.
Well, I know it's difficult. I've been trying it for how many years. And anyone who tries it knows that it's difficult. And whoever said it was to be easy? Whoever said that?
Oh, I I know. You you can read some of these exalted souls. That's how they talk of themselves as souls. You see? They're not human beings.
They're soul. Well, of course, I let other people read that kind of stuff. But I've been thinking very serious for two weeks on this subject. What can I say here in a very few minutes on this vast subject which is of such importance and urgency and immediacy in your daily lives to be Christians? And the fact that you're in those pews this morning proves that you're trying to be a follower of Christ.
I'm not talking to a bunch of, as we would say in the New Testament, Gentiles. And let us not forget it. We are trying to follow Christ. It isn't that we're giving that we've given up on prayer. It's not that we've given up on him.
It's just that prayer is difficult, and furthermore, we've been living in an age that rejects it. Now right away, I wanna make a big distinction. That is prayer which I would call public prayer. A more appropriate and correct term is liturgical prayer where we join together as a community, as the church. Not and notice I I didn't I let I I brought brought in the article.
And there we worship together. The best best example is the mass. That's called liturgical prayer, public prayer. What I wanna speak to you about is what I would call secret prayer, private prayer, the prayer where where we are facing god us ourselves alone. Well, I don't care whether we're in the temple or outside the temple.
I am there alone with god. And this is absolutely inescapable if we wanna be followers of Christ. Now I I wanna read you a paragraph from a book that came out in 1972 by a Jesuit father named father Bassett, b a s s e t. And the title of the book is let us begin praying again. Because after spending two years almost in solitude on the Isles Of Scilly, the Scilly Isles right off the coast of England, This is they he wrote this short book on prayer.
It's right down to earth. It's contemporary, and it's extremely sensible realistic and realistic. Now let me just this is this is his summary of the present situation. It hasn't changed in twenty years. He says this is not I'm just giving you a paraphrase now.
That informality informality is dominant. That's you'll find that in the Catholic church today. Look what's going on the way they're treating the mass. So informality is dominant. Old time discipline, gone.
More of that anon. Morning, evening prayer, dismissed because they were supposed to be middle class hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. So now I'm quoting. This happy go lucky approach is found in the redoubling of effort towards community.
Everything's community. Commitment, Christian charity. The fashion is for group discussion, community singing, operatory processions, liturgically organized kissing. That's it. Kiss a piece.
You know? As for words and prayer, the goal is spontaneity, off the cuff prayer. We are back to the gift of tongues. Silence is out. Even our retreat, the priest retreats, we don't keep silence anymore.
We have a social hour in the midafternoon. Silence is out, and private prayer, if not actually discouraged, has quietly slipped into second place. Now that's not that's not an exaggeration, I don't think. It it it it's a it's an exaggeration if you'll if you think that that applies to every single good honest to god Christian. But as a as a summary of the contemporary world as regards prayer in the Catholic church, you've got it right there.
That's not an exaggeration. As I said, even in our annual retreat down on the Potomac, the only place you're supposed to be keep your mouth shut is in the sleeping corridors, and that's so the men can sleep, which I think is very thoughtful. Need a lot of that on a retreat. Now that's the world in which we're living. Now what what can I say that will give some fire to your own prayer life?
I have two things to say. This is based on my very poor well, I say can't my attempts are poor because I've been trying to pray for a god since I because that's my earliest recollections are prayer. Praying. I've never been able to escape it. Everybody wants me to pray.
The first thing is to have some memorized prayers. And you'll say, ye gods, he must have just stepped off the ark. See, that's absolutely contradictory, all this stuff about off the cuff spontaneity. Let me tell you, if you depend on spontaneous prayers, you know where you're gonna wind up? Not praying.
The only thing has kept me sometimes in prayer is the obligation of saying the office. And let me tell you, sometimes that's very, very dry going. So that's the first thing I recommend, that have a memorized series of prayers that that that they these words will come spontaneously to your mind because they're memorized. Because there are plenty of times when you're going to need to pray, when you won't feel like praying, when there'll be all kinds of reasons against your praying, and then you can rely and say, well, I've got to do it. And that's my second point, discipline.
Discipline. Now I'm not saying that you've gotta get down on your knees beside your bed before a holy picture or something and piously raise your eyes to heaven. I'm posture is important, though. Posture is very important to pray. And if you don't believe me, try it.
Try it. A lot of people today wouldn't think of getting down on their knees beside their bed. They say, after all, god doesn't need me on my knees to pray. Of course, god doesn't need you on your knees to pray, but you need to be on your knees to pray because you cannot even William James backs me up here. The the physical posture of anything has an enormous lot to do with how I feel.
Old Willie James make a makes a big deal out of this, how actors on a stage and he's not that. To do that. Eyes. And as they're Willie so James says, then you are sad because you're crying. Notice, the the emotion follows the follows the the artificiality of making yourself sad.
And this is a fact that old Willie James hammers home time and again. So I'm not I'm not downgrading this posture. Posture is is important. The place where you pray is important. But there are a lot of times you cannot choose your posture.
There are a lot of times when you cannot choose your place, but you still have the obligation of praying to almighty god. Now I'm not talking about prayers and petition. We did that last Sunday. But I just wanna say one word because that's in many instances, that's the only meaning prayer has for a lot of people. When they need something, they go to god.
God help me. Now as I tried to say last Sunday, there's every reason for you to do that. And the best reason I know for a Christian is that Christ insisted that you go and that you go telling god what you need persistently, persistently. And last Sunday, we had the the parable of the unjust judge. Today, we have a different kind of prayer.
I'm talking now about the prayer of worship, of adoration, of praise, of thanksgiving, contrition for sin, and then finally, petition is one of them. It comes last. So have a have a formula of prayer that that you keep the brief, not a long series that you have to have a tome like this to carry in your pocket to to remind you of them. Keep brief and then discipline, that you do not neglect them. That's the reason they should be kept brief and simple and clear and real and to the point that you don't that they are part of you.
That used to be the way it was. When I left grammar school, we had the morning prayer, then we had the night prayer. We had it all memorized, and we used it. It became a habit. And as William James says, that's the main thing in life is to form good habits.
You you get tired of me quoting it, but William James, turn of the century, the Harvard man, he was a he had a lot of common sense which he managed to put into very elegant English, much more than his brother Henry. Now that's what I'm proposing to you. If you don't have it, get it. Now most of you have it or most of you have had that. And in my in my misspent life, I I was practically brought up by the Christian brothers.
I spent nearly eight years with them. And the thing they hammered home to us day I mean, in and day out was the morning offering, the lord's prayer, and then at night, the lord's prayer acts of faith, hope, and charity and contrition. We and they but by the time you finished eight years in their grammar school, you certainly knew your morning and night prayers. Now they didn't tell me I was committing a mortal sin if I missed them. They didn't say I had to fall out of bed on my knees in the cold.
We didn't no no central heating in those days where I was living. So falling on your knees beside your bed in your pajamas was quite an experience if you want if you went that far. God doesn't expect us to go that far, but he does expect us to pray, to pray. Now I'm not against spontaneous prayers, but I have this to say. If you if you attempt to have prayers before meals in your home where I presume you have two or three meals regularly, seven days a week, every day of the month, every day of the year, you try making up a prayer.
Every for every meal which is off the cuff, you'll run dry in less than a week. And then secondly, I have yet to hear of course, I've had many a homily preached before I could get to the food. When when somebody gets up and tells tells god how happy we are to be together, you know, and all of this and all that, then they get into the creation of the world with Adam and Eve and, you know, meanwhile, the roast is getting cold. I have yet to hear any spontaneous off the cuff prayer to bless the board that matches the old. Bless us, oh lord, in these high gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our lord.
You analyze that. You see what's in there. Your whole Christian philosophy of life is in there. I have yet to hear anything to match it. So I never use anything else but that because I don't see anything else that that's that's worth to replace it.
But if you want to but what I'm saying is you've got to pray. And if you simply think it's going to come spontaneously under all occasions, and by Jiminy, especially when you need it most, it's not going to come. You take that scene. I never will forget it. That scene from MASH where the an ordinary officer is called upon to do a tracheotomy.
And this this young chaplain who's there, you I don't know his name, he's there in a in a jeep. So they're gonna do a tracheotomy via telephone with the surgeon back in the camp. So, finally, the layman says to the priest, don't you think, father, we ought to say a prayer? I'm sure the patient agreed with that. So what does the good priest say?
Bless us, oh lord, in these thy gifts which you are about to receive from thy back as they slice the guy's throat. But there's a there's a there's a big lesson in that for us. When we need to pray most, and that is at all times. Christ said that. We need to pray.
And sometimes when we need it, most we can't. We run dry. How many times good people tell you, or they used to when they came to confession, and you had some kind of spiritual direction. He said, I try to pray, but I simply cannot. I new words come.
Well, I said, first of all, that may be the best prayer you ever offered. That's point number one. And secondly, that's the time you need a prayer book or read the read the New Testament or something. But don't think that because you're not enjoying your prayer, that that's a test for your praying very, very well. Probably, what was our what was the ultimate prayer of Christ on the cross to his heavenly father?
My god. My god. Why have you abandoned me? That's Christ on the cross. And we to that.
That. Do do do is no test of anything except whether you probably had a good meal or something. The test is whether you do it. And our lord never said to to enjoy in following. All he said, follow me.
Hang on to my cross. Follow my footsteps. That's all he ever promised us. And one way we do it, and we've got to do it, is to pray, which means the essence of prayer is in some way to join ourselves to God, to approach God, and we can do that through his son Jesus Christ. There can't be any anthropomorphism when you talk about Christ.
That is making making a human being likened to God. Because god, you can't form an image of god. You can't say a single thing about god, which is true, absolutely true, but you can about Christ. He's our brother. He's one of us, absolutely human.
But not only human, personality, divine. And so what we try to do with our private prayer is to keep Jesus Christ in our daily lives. And you will do that with your morning prayer and with your night prayer. And that morning prayer when you tumble out of bed, where the whole day is ahead of you, and sometimes that's the worst time of the day. Things things seem just absolutely hopeless some mornings.
I know you experienced this, that twilight zone, everything, all your difficulties are magnified. That's the time you turn to Christ, and you offer him your day. Laborare estorare. To labor is to pray. That's no substitute though for prayer, but the thing is that's very much part of it, that you think of your day and you say, Lord, it's yours.
It's a mess. I don't know how I'm gonna work my way through it. It's yours. It's yours. And we'll go and we'll work it out together.
The morning offering. Then you have your night prayer. That certainly should include acts of faith, hope, charity, and contrition. Now just one little private note, And this is absolutely my experience. I'm not offering it for anything more than that.
As I say, I've been at this thing of praying for for a long, long time. Even in the even in, as I say, in my earliest years with the Christian brothers, boy, did they hammer this into us about prayer. Then when I went to the seminary, they thought prayer was important too. And every single morning, we began with a half hour meditation, which most of the time was just a a period of thirty minutes of sleep. Try to meditate at 05:30 in the morning in a big community hall which is cold.
The thing that strike that that really rouses me is the presence of god. Now I got that mostly from Saint Thomas and from philosophy, not from theology. But that every that god is absolutely, completely, holy, totally here because there's no meaning to anything else about god. There's no space relationships with god at all. I can't escape god.
And the second thing is this idea of contingency, that every single thing in this universe depends, contingent, depends upon god almighty and is everywhere. Now you'll say that's highly abstract. I know it. I'm not suggesting this to everybody. I'm telling you just my own.
But when I tie that in with a morning offering and and and say at the beginning of the day, that's when you're thinking of all the things that's awful in the day. You say, god, I it's a mess, or maybe it's gonna be nice. There's a picnic or something. You you offer that to god too. Life isn't all misery.
So you you offer it all to god. And during the day, that's all fulfilled in his you can't escape his presence. It's just a matter of you realizing his presence and doing something about it. And here's where little, what we call inspirational prayers come through. Just a few words.
God, I love you. God, help me. God, you know, I I'm a mess. Notice that definite article of the of the old of the tax collector. I am the sinner, and that's perfectly clear in the Greek.
But you see, Latin doesn't have that definite article. So when they translated into Latin, they couldn't translate it. But the Greek has both the are the indefinite and the definite article. So the publican, he got he's so aware of his sinfulness before god that he calls himself the sinner. The notice there's no collectivity in his mind.
And so I beg you. Well, maybe what I've said is you you that hasn't registered at all. It's my effort to say something that will stimulate you, good people, to private prayer, that you will have an individual proper relationship with god, that he will be that god through his son, Jesus Christ, and his mother, Mary, that you will never be alone. You will never be isolated. You won't be insulated.
You won't be abs you won't be a solitary figure without any signs of hope to help you. You will never be in that street. Never. But whether you are or not or whether you think well of this or not, if you say you're a Christian, you're obligated to worship. And one of the elements of worship is prayer daily.
You can't escape it, and you can't use a better prayer than the lord's prayer. That's the prayer god gave us. In the name of the father, the son, and the spirit. Amen.