July 27, 2025
Dear Friends,
Every week, I try to start praying and preparing on Monday for the homily I will preach the following Sunday. As part of my process, I look at several Scripture commentaries that discuss the readings and psalm that we hear proclaimed at Sunday Mass. One commentary that I have added in the past couple of years was written by Sister Verna A. Holyhead, S.G.S., (1933-2011) who was an Australian Sister of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St. Benedict. Her commentary incorporates biblical scholarship, liturgical insights, and pastoral sensitivity.
When I read Sister Verna’s commentary on this Sunday’s readings, I was struck by the particularly insightful reflections she offered. I would like to share some of what she wrote with you.
Reflecting on the first reading’s account of Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah, Sister Verna wrote:
This is an event that is much more than a scene of Bedouin bargaining. Abraham, the just, intercedes not for his own people, but for foreigners, for he is the one in whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3). We might ask ourselves how often we intercede for the inhabitants of our contemporary “Sodoms”: those whose ethical, sexual, personal stances we find distasteful, disillusioning, or destructive? Abraham’s justice and his role as intercessor flow from his intimate relationship with God who is the Just One of all the earth (v. 25). (With Burning Hearts: Welcoming the Word in Year C, p. 127)
Later in her commentary, when reflecting on Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Gospel passage we hear from St. Luke, Sister Verna wrote:
Why do we pray? It is not to impose our will on God, but to ask God to make us available to the divine will and to share our concerns with God, to place these under God’s loving judgment. It is, therefore, not an effort to change God, but to change ourselves. Of all the evangelists, it is Luke who speaks most about prayer. His Gospel begins (Luke 1:10) and ends (Luke 24:53) in the context of prayer. At significant moments in his life, Jesus prays, and it is his example that leads the disciples to ask him: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). The Lukan version of Jesus’ response is direct, shorter, more simple than Matthew’s (Matt 6:9-13), and expresses the deepest reality of Jesus’ own relationship with his God, into which he wants his disciples to be drawn. The words are no magic formula, but help us to realize the personal reality of the One to whom we pray. (Ibid., pp.127-128)
I very much appreciate these insights. When we pray, we are not bargaining with God, nor are we trying to impose our will on him. The foundation of prayer must be our intimate relationship with God, which is made possible by our incorporation into Christ through faith and Baptism. These may not be new or earth-shattering truths for us, but they are important reminders of the nature of Christian prayer, which is really prayer in Christ.
After reflecting on why we pray, Sister Verna offered a word of caution about our praying of the Lord’s Prayer in particular. She wrote, “Our familiarity with the Lord’s Prayer may blunt our appreciation of its radical, even subversive, teaching about prayer. It is to be the prayer of a community that is conscious of both its intimate relationship with God and its presence in and responsibility for the world.” (Ibid., p. 128) I don’t know about you, but I struggle to pray the Lord’s Prayer with such appreciation and conscientiousness.
That is why I think that it can be so formative and significant for us to pray the Lord’s Prayer together at every Mass, immediately after the Eucharistic Prayer and before our reception of Holy Communion. During that period of intense prayer and of communion with the Lord and each other, the prayer Jesus taught his disciples is meant to remind us of our intimate relationship with God as his people and of our presence in and responsibility for the world God has entrusted to us.
Peace,
Father Leo