Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 27, 2025

Luke 11: 1-13

In the first part of today’s gospel from Luke, Jesus is telling his disciples how to pray as they asked him to do. But in the second part, Jesus is telling them, and us, not just the words of a prayer, but he is saying something perhaps even more important. Jesus is explaining to us that we must continue to pray to the Father even when it seems like he is not listening to us. And even more, that the Father will give us what we need, which is not always what we want.

The story in the gospel of the man coming to his friends house in the middle of the night needs some explanation for us who are used to modern life. You may remember that we spoke about the importance of the idea of hospitality in the time of Jesus; nothing was more important than being hospitable in the extreme, even for guest who were strangers. This hospitality shows up again today, though in itself, it is not the main point. The first man is called to be hospitable at an inconvenient time, the middle of the night. He has no bread, and probable no grain; yet, he must attempt to treat his guest as best he can. So, he goes in the pitch black dark of night and makes his way to a friend’s house, which is no small accomplishment in itself. 

Next, he has to try to wake up his friend after the friend and his family have gone to bed. This is more difficult that it would seem to us. The houses in the Holy Land of Jesus time were only one big room; the floor of the front part was lower than the back part, and the animals were taken in there at night. In the back part was the fireplace; all the family spread out on the floor on sleeping mats. So, for one person to get up, the rest would have to be disturbed. The first difficulty is to make oneself heard over the animals and the knocking reach the sleepers in the back; the next thing was to convince the head of the family to disturb all the others and answer the door.

Finally, it is most likely that the family which has been disturbed has no bread made, or has very little left over. In a time of no preservatives, bread was usually baked fresh every morning. Therefore, the friend who has been awakened, might have to bake the bread also, even though this would take much less time than it would today since the bread was like pita bread. So, the point is that this would be a lot of trouble. Yet, through persistence, the man might be willing to get up and take care of the request for bread, even if he would not do it for friendship.

This is brought out very well in the first reading where Abraham begs God’s mercy for the just people in Sodom and Gomorrah. Again it is persistence, never tiring of asking God’s help, that is successful. Abraham’s concern for his relatives whom he knows are good, forces him to be very bold with God. Jesus is telling us to do the same.

Our Father, on the other hand, will be attentive to our requests out of love and concern for each of us. But, what is the best answer to our prayers, may indeed sometimes look like the scorpion or the snake in the gospel reading. How many times did we want our parents to let us do something which they refused because they saw it was not good for us God is always listening; our job is to be sensitive to God’s answers to us and to recognize them when they come.

We need to be like Jesus, and give away the time, and lay it simply before God without demanding that we see the results we want to happen. This is, after all, the prayer Jesus had with his Father when he made time to be alone with him. A colleague asked C.S. Lewis if he really thought he could change God with his prayer for the cure of his wife’s cancer. Lewis replied: “Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes me.” It makes real our petition “that your will be done.” As Carmelite Sister Ruth Burrows points out, “the Spirit inspires us to cry out in confidence: ' Father, dear Father.'” That 'window to eternity' that is prayer brings us into the reality of our Father's presence which is actually there, but which we only dimly perceive. It changes us if we daily make that contact with Jesus' Father, and our Father.

Fr. John Tran