Father Rick Bolte's Homily

C: Twenty Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time            2007-10-21

A small fish once said to his mother, “I have heard so much about water and how important it is.  Where is this water?”  A fawn said to her mother, “I have heard that air is essential for us to live.  Where is this air?”  A small boy said to his mother, “I have heard so much about God and how wonderful God is to us.  Where is God?”

In today’s Gospel parable, Jesus assures us that even an unjust judge can be persuaded by the pestering of a widow who otherwise has no power to affect him.  Jesus tells us if an unjust judge can be so persuaded, how much more will God surely help us since God already loves us.  But do we really believe God answers our prayers?  Or do we really try to work it all out ourselves and call on God in the hope that it might help?

If we have children (and we may even remember back to when we were children), we know that children are not always happy with us nor do they always feel we love them.  When they don’t get their way or when our decisions don’t make sense to them, they may state that they don’t think we love them.  Part of a parent’s job is to do what we believe is best for our children whether they appreciate it or not.  If our goal is to be their friend and try to give them everything they want, we will be lousy parents as we will do a poor job of caring for them.

We forget we are children with our God.  We like to think we know what is best.  We even judge God as unfair or uncaring since God doesn’t do the things we expect God to do.  God acts in our lives even when we don’t recognize it or appreciate it.  On any number of retreats, when the people making the retreat first gather, the leader will remind them that even though they can point to others people and circumstances that led them to make the retreat, in reality it was God who led them there.  It is God who has led you to where you are today.

We don’t always recognize God because we don’t always like the way things go.  We ask God to help us do things our way and sometimes we thank God if it turns out as we liked.  But God is always there.  When we look back on our life, we realize that there were indeed hands guiding us through the ups and downs of life.  In the hard times, we may have doubted God’s presence or action in our lives.  We may have even been mad at God.  But God is ever faithful to us.  When we ask God for our “daily bread” in the Our Father, we are asking God to give us what we need to grow spiritually, not just to give us what we want.  Let us ask God for the wisdom to see where God is present in our lives protecting us yet guiding us to where we need to go.  May we feel the loving embrace of God even when he leads us into those painful places that we need to grow. There are many things that are just part of our lives that we don’t notice.