In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. I was all primed to speak a few words about a great hero of mine, Albert the Great. Remember, he's the only man in the middle ages who was called the great, Albert the Great, the teacher of Aquinas. A great man, tremendously important personage, without reference to his famous pupil, Thomas Aquinas.
But I can't resist speaking to this subject this morning about prayer. Now, I know that God is omnipotent, his omniscient, his he is benevolent, but above all, his omniscient. In other words, God knows everything, and he can do everything. I know that. And this is the problem of prayer.
Why then I mean, prayer petition. That's what we're talking asking God to give me prayers. Then the question is, why do I have to tell God what I need when God already knows it? Now, this is a very reasonable, intelligent, sensible problem. I'm not about to answer it philosophically.
I'm only saying this, I rest my case with Jesus Christ. And if you want to call it a mystery, fine. It's alright by me. Because certainly, without any shadow of a doubt, our blessed Lord commanded us to holler at God, to become downright unknowing with God in asking for things. Now, is beyond dispute.
If you're a Christian and accept the the New Testament, where take the parable. And this is a parable that our blessed Lord gave us, and he develops. It's a long piece of, well, of speaking as Jesus gave it. It's not just a sentence or two because our blessed Lord amplifies it. He makes a big deal out of it.
The man who's locked up his house and he's going to bed with his family is all secure from the anything that may happen from the outside world. Remember, locking your house up in those days and securing it against invaders from the outside was more than just slipping a lock. So he's all tidied up. Everything is secure. He's in bed sound asleep when, bang, bang, bang.
Someone trying to break down his front door or his back door, wherever it was. And wakes up and asks the the crazy guy what he wants. He says, I want some bread. Friend of mine just came in, I don't have anything to give him. Give me some bread.
And Christ says that the fellow is is very angry about the situation, being disturbed in his sleep. So he tells the guy who wants the bread, get out of here. And today would have been probably more explicit in how he told him to get out. But the man keeps hammering on the door. He's probably kicking it now with his foot.
And then our Lord says that the master of the house, because he wants to get some sleep, comes down, gives the guy the bread, not because of any generosity, but because he wants to sleep. Now there I'm not exaggerating. This is God bless the Lord's own parable. Take today's instance. A man born blind who becomes a nuisance and makes a nuisance of himself.
And he must have he must have known something about Jesus, he calls him son of David. When he hears it as Jesus of Nazareth coming by, he starts shouting out. Very improper. Very improper. It's embarrassing to people who are trying to have a nice tidy reception for Jesus.
And here's this beggar shouting his head off, disturbing, making a mess out of the whole situation, which should be marked with decorum. And the more they tell him to shut up, the louder he shouts to Jesus. What does Jesus say? Now, this is not a parable. Our Lord said, what do you want me to do for you?
This isn't the first time he's done. He did that with a leper. He'd say, this is nonsense. Why does he say, what do you want me to do? It's obvious what the man wants.
He wants to see. He thinks he's got a chance of getting his sight. Do you know what that means? Have you met anybody recently who's losing their sight? I have, right in this parish.
You know what what this meant to that man who's crying out with the hope that here he can see? Christ says, what do you want me to do? Like a man walking into the hospital with a two or three fractures in his right leg and the leg's dangling, and the doctor says, what? Why did you come here? Now, this is not a parable.
Why does our Lord say, what do you want me to do? Man says, I want to see. Now, the end is not yet. Our Lord says, good. You will see your faith has healed you.
Oh, Christ says, I'm not curing you. I don't tell you to see. Christ says, your faith has healed you. So don't you downgrade faith healers. And then, what strikes me very forcefully is this, that last sentence when it says, all the people witnessed this and gave praise to God.
That's striking. Notice, not to Christ, but to God. This is striking. This is a very dramatic Of course, it's dramatic. Jericho, you know, the newest is down by the River Jordan.
It is still it's still a very very prosperous, attractive, beautiful city. You can have snow up in Jerusalem and it's tropical down in Jericho. I experienced that. And here you have this crowd and here you have this incident and it's fantastic. Fantastic in its detail, which aren't details at all.
But one point I want to make is this, however we may argue philosophically about for or against the give me prayers, the fact is that we have our blessed Lord who told us how to pray. And in his the prayer he gave us, includes a petition for our daily bread. Well, the same Lord told us about that the not a sparrow falls from the sky, not a hair falls from your head, not a not a dandelion gets destroyed in the field. And then he says, if your whole if your if your heavenly father cares for these things that way, how much more you? So our blessed Lord himself says that God knows what's going on.
We don't have to tell God what we need, he knows it. Then why pray in the sense of the give me prayer, that telling God, oh God, let me see. Does God know I'm blind? Of course he knows I'm blind. Then why do I have to tell him I'm blind?
All I can say is Jesus told me. Jesus told me. Not only does Jesus tell me to do it, he did it himself. He prayed. He used to give me prayers.
Look at his prayer in Gethsemane. Look at his prayer over Jerusalem when he cried and wept tears over the city. Now, I said two things. First of all, that this business of asking God, prayers and petition, it involves something I can't explain. I can argue it philosophically, either side.
But I I take this out of the realm of what I know by reason and I rest faithfully and absolutely on Jesus Christ. He he told us by word, by example, by his own life, that when that we should go to God, tell God what I need. My father likes to hear it. The name of the father, of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen.