Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Have you ever felt like prayer is not working? Like God’s not listening? Like He can’t even hear you? 

Don’t worry, feeling that way doesn’t make you a bad Christian. In fact, you’re not the first to feel this way. But how you respond to these feelings is important. 

There are even great Saints in our Church who have felt distant from God at times. For example, St. John of the Cross wrote a book called the Dark Night of the Soul about feeling like God was distant. Another Saint we all know is St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. After her death her journals revealed that she felt distant from God for decades. But that didn’t change her mission to serve the poor or her dedication to prayer. 

You can even turn to the Bible to see examples of people feeling distant from God. The people of Israel “mourned in captivity” under the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and other groups that they had conflict with over the centuries, and God promised them a Messiah – but Jesus didn’t come for hundreds of years. They were probably feeling like their prayers were going unanswered. This feeling isn’t a new thing for God’s followers. 

One thing all of the examples have in common is that they persisted in prayer – they showed up, and God was able to do great things through them.

Just last week we heard Jesus tell the parable in the Gospel about the persistent widow who follows up with the judge, and eventually he rewards her for her persistence. We so easily get discouraged and we stop praying, but we need to persist. 

This week in the first reading for Sunday in the book of Sirach we hear, said in many ways, “God hears the cry of the oppressed,” and “The one who serves God willingly is heard; his petition reaches the heavens.” Psalm 34 assures us “the Lord hears the cry of the poor.” 

In Isaiah we’re reminded that God’s thoughts and ways are far above our ways – we’ll never understand it perfectly. Consider the prayer of the Israelites, the Messiah did come, God did answer their prayer, just not in the way they expected. In fact, he answered it in a way that was beyond their wildest dreams.

There is one thing we can be confident in it’s that even when we don’t feel like we are hearing answers or getting a response, we can know that the Lord is hearing our prayers. We should persist, be patient, and trust in the Lord.