27 July 2025 -- 17th Sunday ‘C’
Gen 18:20-32; Col 2:12,14; Luke 11:1-13
Homily
In the section of Luke's Gospel that we have been reading for several Sundays, he describes Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and places events there that other evangelists have placed at other times in Jesus' life. This section also contains stories that only Luke tells. This was the case with the Gospel of the Good Samaritan two weeks ago and that of Martha and Mary last Sunday. In the text we have just read, Luke recounts two teachings of Jesus on prayer that we also find in Matthew, namely the Lord's Prayer and the exhortation: "Ask and you shall receive... etc". And between these two teachings, Luke places another teaching of Jesus, which he alone recounts: that of the importunate friend. Let us pause for a moment on this passage.
This text is interesting first of all because it shows us an aspect of Jesus' personality that does not often appear in the Gospels. We see a somewhat playful Jesus, displaying a good sense of humour and gently teasing his listeners. Jesus usually uses parables as His preferred method of teaching. A parable is a made-up story, at the end of which each listener is led to identify with one or another of the characters and learn a lesson. Here, Jesus does not tell a parable. He speaks directly to his listeners and says to them, "Suppose you have a friend who comes to bother you during the night. Jesus imagines a scene that would take place between friends, not between strangers, let alone enemies. So, ‘Suppose,’ says Jesus, ‘you have a friend who receives another friend during the night and, having nothing to offer him, comes to wake you up in the middle of the night to borrow three loaves of bread.’ What will you do? You would probably say to him, ‘This is no time to be disturbing people. Leave me alone! The whole family is already in bed and asleep.’ And then, of course, the other person would continue to insist, as friends do, and in the end you would give him what he asked for, not because he is a friend, but simply to get rid of him. From here, we can see Jesus' listeners nodding their heads and smiling, admitting that this is indeed how things would happen.
Luke then goes on to recount another teaching of Jesus, which is very similar (and which Matthew also reports). ‘If your son asks you for a fish,’ he says, ‘will you give him a snake that will bite him? And if he asks you for an egg, will you give him a scorpion that will sting him? Of course not.’
And the conclusion of these two questions from Jesus is straightforward: ‘If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven...’ Here the text of St Luke differs from that of Matthew. According to Matthew, Jesus says: ‘How much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.’ According to Luke, he says rather: ‘How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.’
The purpose of prayer is therefore not to obtain from God the satisfaction of all our desires, and even less of all our whims. Rather, it is to enter into communion with God, so that we may have the same Spirit as Him and thus come to know what we must do and how we must act. As intelligent creatures, we have a responsibility to manage ourselves and the environment in which we live. We must not ask God to do it for us. But we must ask Him for the intelligence, the spirit – His spirit, the Holy Spirit – that will enable us to make the right decisions throughout our lives.
We will then ask, as we say in the Lord's Prayer, that a reign of justice and love come to this earth, and we will strive to do our small part to bring it about. We will concern ourselves with our daily bread (but not with accumulating colossal fortunes) and we will work to ensure that this is also achieved for every human being. We will strive to forgive, and we will avoid the temptation of triumphalism. Let us also note that all the requests in the Lord's Prayer concerning our needs are formulated in the first person plural.
The ‘Our Father,’ the prayer taught by Jesus, can therefore be summed up in two things: the request that the Church's mission to establish a reign of communion and justice on earth be effective, and the request that we Christians be ever more worthy of that name, working to make our world ever more a world of brothers and sisters.
Armand Veilleux