Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

September 7, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090723.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Paul gives us a textbook on how to pray for one another.

I don’t know about you, but when I pray for other people, it’s usually a prayer like this:

“Dear God, please let Drusilla pass her nursing exam this eighth time trying.” or

“Dear God, please help Joe get well and recover from his unfortunate fall out of the air balloon.”

In other words, I often have a specific result in mind when I pray like this. I tell God how I’d like things to turn out – especially when I pray for myself. 😉

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Paul’s prayer is different. He doesn’t pray for specific results for his Colossian friends. Rather, he prays for those spiritual gifts which will allow his friends to grow fully in grace and holiness, no matter the result of their circumstances:

• to have knowledge of God’s will
• to grow in spiritual wisdom and understanding
• to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord
• to be fully pleasing to God
• to bear fruit in every good work
• to grow in the knowledge of God
• to be strengthened with every power
• to have endurance and patience
• to joyfully give thanks to God

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As you can see, even if Drusilla fails again and Joe ends up with aerophobia, they would still be blessed beyond measure by gifts like the ones Paul prays for.

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In our Gospel, Jesus wants his friends to grow in spiritual gifts as well. To encourage that, he performs a delightful and astounding miracle to shore up his followers’ faith.

Just put yourself on that seashore that morning when two ramshackle boats nearly sank with a tsunami of magic fish! Picture Jesus enjoying his friends’ amazement as the fish tails flew up and wagged in the early morning sunlight. Imagine the profound response this miracle inspired, enough to leave everything behind to embrace its Source!

… astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized Peter
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men.”
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.

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God’s miraculous gifts pour into our lives every day, often by virtue of our friends’ prayers and love. May we receive them with open hearts and pray for them for those whose names we speak to God.

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Poetry: excerpts from A Prayer for My Daughter by W.B. Yeats

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend….

…. In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place…

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Music: The Prayer – written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa and Tony Renis