Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on July 27, 2025 at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:12-14; and Luke 11:1-13.

Of the four gospels, Luke has the most to say on prayer. We’ll focus on prayer today, and we’ll return to this theme for several weekends in October.

Two comments before we hear the readings proclaimed today. The first is about what comes right before our passage from Genesis. God muses whether to tell Abraham in advance about the plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. God decides to share the information, since Abraham has entered a covenant with God in creating a great nation. The second comment is about the middle portion of our gospel passage. Jesus talks about a grumpy neighbor that we wake up in the middle of the night to ask for bread to feed unexpected guests. Jesus says, “if the neighbor does not get up to give you the loaves because of your friendship, the neighbor will get up to give you whatever you need because of your persistence.” Is God like a grumpy neighbor? No! That’s not the point of Jesus’ analogy! The point is that we should be persistent in our prayer.

We continue to ask, to seek, and to knock, trusting that Almighty God knows what we need better than we do. Let us thank our Father in heaven for providing all that we need, including the great gift of mercy.

I have heard some great talks about prayer. But frankly, I’ve heard a lot more talks on the topic that didn’t sound very practical or realistic to me. Too often, talks about prayer focus on one or more of three tired themes:

1. Prayer is really important.
2. You should pray more than you currently do.
3. I have a specific way of praying that works for me, so you should pray the same way.

This is tragic, because the Catholic Church has an incredible wealth of practical advice on prayer, written by saints with a variety of temperaments, from a variety of eras and cultures. No matter our personalities and no matter our images of God, there are likely many different forms of prayer that can bind each of us closer to God, if only we knew about them and could give them a try.

I am not an expert on prayer. Nevertheless, I have 4 insights to share with you. These revelations are by no means unique to me, but maybe I’ll say something in a different way than you’ve heard it said by someone else before.

First of all, why should we pray? When it right comes down to it, our attempts to pray acknowledge that we have some belief – tenuous though it may be – that God exists. No matter whether we come to God in joy or in sorrow, in certainty or in doubt, prayer always has the potential to change us and to change our relationship with God. By opening ourselves up to God’s divine presence, we have the potential to get in touch with a greater reality. We may receive insights to better understand our current circumstances, our relationship with God, or a wider range of possibilities available to us.

Second: for so many of us, our biggest downfall in praying is that we want to wait until we feel inspired to pray. That’s not a good way to have a robust prayer life. Consider the advice that the great science fiction writer Octavia Butler gave to aspiring authors. She said, “Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” Or as some very spiritual friends of mine say, prayer is a discipline, like going to the gym. You show up, and you give it your best shot. At the gym, most of us don’t think that we need to break personal records every day. No matter how the individual workout goes, it’s not time wasted. It’s the same with prayer. Any time spent trying to pray is time well spent. As a famous movie director once said, “Showing up is 80% of my life.” In prayer, at least 95% of the work is simply showing up!

Third, prayer is conversation with God. That means that we shouldn’t do all the talking. If we just tell God about our concerns or desires and then walk away without listening to God’s response, that’s not really a conversation.

• How often do we ask God for a stone or a scorpion, when God might suggest that we will be more nourished by an egg or a fish?
• The best parts of Abraham’s prayer with God in our first reading today are… the awkward pauses.

We need to give God a chance to speak. God decided to share his plans with Abraham. Even if we catch our minds wandering as we’re trying to listen to God, that’s no reason to get mad at ourselves. We just need to gently bring ourselves back to the present moment and listen some more. And like in any other loving relationship, there will be moments when we’re worried that God isn’t listening to us. But if we keep praying, we’ll work through this in our relationship with God.

Fourth and finally, as long as we endeavor to bring our most authentic selves to our conversations with God, there’s really only one way to “mess up” prayer. The one thing that can sabotage our prayer time is to start evaluating how well we’re praying. Once we start evaluating, we’re no longer praying. Prayer is a relationship with God. Let’s think about some other relationships. On first dates, we’re constantly evaluating if the other person likes us, is paying attention to us, or finds us sufficiently charming, funny, smart, and good-looking. But once we know someone a little bit better, we don’t usually stop in the middle of a conversation with them to evaluate the quality of the conversation we’re having. So why should we stop in the middle of prayer to evaluate how well we’re relating to God?

I wrote most of this homily a week and a half ago, before I went on an 8-day directed Ignatian retreat. I had done a lot of these during my initial discernment, in the seminary, and in my early years of priesthood, but it had been 9 years since I had done one. Boy, was I overdue! This past week, my spiritual director challenged me to expand my concept of God and why I pray. I have often joked that my God is a therapist God. Most of my time in prayer has been asking the Holy Spirit for specific emotional gifts and insights. But my director suggested what I need at this point in my spiritual journey is a deep, emotional, covenantal relationship with Jesus. My prayer would benefit from having more of a sense of spending time with a best friend, and less of sense of seeking out the counsel of an experienced professional. Did I figure out how to expand my concept of God in the past 8 days? Of course not, but I’m sure that if I spend the time in prayer in this new way, the growth will begin to happen. I’m excited about the possibilities.

I’ll leave you with these words from my buddy Mike Hayes, one of the new deacon affiliates of the Paulist Fathers: “Prayer is not something to be mastered; it’s a practice used to cultivate a habit. And habits change people!” Mike continues: “Cultivating a habit of prayer ensures that we actually pray. Someone who says [that] they pray every day understands prayer much more than someone who says that they know how to pray.”

There’s nothing to hold us back from praying. Let’s just get in there and do it!

Preview photo credit: cuegalos under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0 license