Prayer and Work

Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 74 (73): 20, 19, 22, 23 Look to your covenant, O Lord, and forget not the life of your poor ones for ever. Arise, O God, and defend your cause, and forget not the cries of those who seek you.

Collect Almighty ever‑living God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 33:1, 12, 18-22; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Then Peter said, “Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?” And the Lord replied, “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant in charge of all his property. But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish the servant severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful. That servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely; and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” (Luke 12:32-48)

Prayer and Work In the Gospel of today our Lord states that we are to live in such a way as to be ready at a moment’s notice were our time suddenly to come. ‘Be like men waiting for the master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks,’ our Lord says. ‘You too,’ he continues, ‘must stand ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’ (Luke 32-48) The coming of the Lord is prominent in our Lord’s teaching. If we are to be always ready for his coming, our life must be characterised by service of him and prayer before him — work and prayer. Our Lord said that we are to pray always, which is to say that we are to live with a spirit of prayer. This involves fixed times of prayer together with numerous moments of prayer in which we raise our hearts to God in the midst of our life’s activities. I would recommend that each day we set aside five or ten minutes praying with a scene from the Gospel — which could be the Gospel of the day in the daily missal. One could read it over the night before just before retiring. Then as we rise, after making our morning offering, let us turn our thoughts to Jesus in that Gospel scene we are about to pray over. Let us give five or ten minutes to being with our Lord in that Gospel scene, watching him in the scene described in the Gospel passage, considering his words, quietly and prayerfully thinking of him as if we were present personally. He is actually with us during our prayer. So is Mary Christ’s mother and our mother, and our guardian angel. We will find that something in the Gospel passage will strike home, something our Lord says, or something the passage says about our Lord himself. A new realization will come over us in our prayer, and a new closeness to Jesus. Our ten minutes have come to an end, and the day’s duties must now be taken up. We then take with us in our heart what we have seen, felt and realized briefly in our ten minutes of prayer. Let us hold to it, like Mary who, St Luke writes, remembered these things and pondered them in her heart.

So then, the day’s duties having begun, we keep in our heart what we have gained from our brief meditation at the start of the day. This brief meditation will be better if we have disposed ourselves a little for it the night before, and if we have truly entered into that ten minutes of meditation. It ought be above all a time of presence with Jesus. During the day our brief meditation will be the resource from which numerous moments of fleeting prayer will come forth from our hearts. During the day’s work, we ought develop the habit of briefly renewing and building on the contact with Jesus which we had during that first ten minutes of meditation at the start of the day. These need only be fleeting moments but they are necessary to preserve constant contact with Jesus. They will enable us to pray always, and to live for him. Often during the day we ought pray briefly to Jesus, to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, and also to our heavenly friends — Mary, our Guardian Angel, our favourite saints, such as St Joseph. We can use favourite short prayers, say, like just “Jesus!” or “Mary!” or “Father!” Those brief prayers can constitute a frequent glance of the heart at God. In them we express the desire we have of showing our love for him in doing our best in the work we are currently performing, whether for family or employer or whoever. Now, while prayer is essential, our daily work is also fundamental if we are to please God and be ready for his coming. It could be some dreary and difficult housework chore, it could be a dull period at school, it could be some unpleasant stage of things in our workplace. It could be intractable difficulties in research or writing. Whatever it is, it should be done as well as possible, and for Jesus. Everything we do we should do in such a way that God will be honoured and glorified the more. In everything we ought strive for purity of intention: for God’s greater glory. Our prayer enables us to sanctify our work, and our work itself sanctifies us if we do it for God. We may not know very clearly what our work in life will amount to, but if each day we try to fulfill the duties of the work of that day as well as we possibly can, we will indeed be gradually fulfilling the work in life that God has given us to do.

Let us be busy about our tasks, looking on them as tasks entrusted to us by God himself, by God who will be pleased with us if we do them well for him. We should try to make our work holy, we should try to make ourselves holy by our work, and we should try to make others holy by our work. Daily work and daily prayer, all for Jesus. That is the key to being constantly ready for the coming of Jesus.

(E.J.Tyler)

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