Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today’s Gospel account involves two separate families each with their own distinct needs colliding in one encounter with our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, coupled with St. Paul’s autobiographical detail of his unknown “thorn in the flesh,” provide us entrée into a very common but perplexing, if not more, human experience that challenges even the most faithful among us, that is, of seemingly unanswered prayer or, at best, delayed answers. We all know just how disheartening this can be, causing some of us to tragically turn away from God.
In the Gospel, reported not just by St. Luke, but by Sts. Matthew and Mark as well (Mt. 9:18-26; Mk. 5:21-43; Lk. 8:41-56), we find a woman who has been suffering with a progressively worsening hemorrhagic condition of some sort for 12 excruciating years. Her progressively deteriorating condition has taken a toll upon her physically, spiritually, emotionally, economically, and psychologically. It has depleted her finances and isolated her from her community since it also rendered her ritually unclean to attend Temple and synagogue services, inhibiting her contact with others (much like leprosy) due to the bleeding. Like the demoniac we encountered last week, she is being stripped of her humanity to the point that her identity has become her disease. This prohibition from human contact due to her bleeding is why we find her coming up from behind Jesus, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible in the crowd. Perhaps this was a last-ditch effort on her part, a final desperate act of a desperate soul. Or, it could’ve been an act of hope on her part, having heard of this Jesus the Healer and Great Physician of soul and body because as both Matthew and Mark report in their accounts she said to herself, “’If I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole.’” This was the hope born of faith – a faithful daughter of Israel whose physical malady rendered her inaccessible to those around her but not to God. In all likelihood, she has spent these 12 grueling years, not only on doctors, but in prayer pursuing God’s healing day-in and day-out with only silence as God’s answer. Yet, we know it all leads her up to this day when she encounters God face-to-face in His Son.
However, her interception of the Master causes His delay in answering another prayer – the prayer of a dying child’s father. She touches the hem of His garment, He senses healing power flow from Him and He pauses to make inquiry as to who touched Him, much to the consternation of His Disciples and, I would propose, even more consternation to the father who was trying to get the Master to his daughter before it was too late. There is a delay. God doesn’t answer immediately, He doesn’t simply speak a word like He did with the centurion’s sick servant, if you recall that story (Mt. 8:5-13; Lk. 7:1-10). And the delay – albeit for good reasons – nonetheless costs the little girl her life. All of this is absolutely perplexing to us as mortals. Yet, Jesus Christ Who is the Resurrection and the Life (Jn. 11:25) is not shaken by the news of the little girl’s death, but urges her father to believe in Him, to believe in what he has just seen with his eyes and heard with his ears. “Set aside your fears,” Jesus tells him, “’believe only, and she shall be made whole,’ just like I did with the woman with the flow of blood.” Eternity passes, or so it seems for those who wait upon the Lord in unanswered prayer. Jesus, however, arrives at her death bed and there He raises this 12 year old up to life much to the joy of her family and despite the interruption in the journey. All things are done in God’s good time under God’s Providence Who is merciful and loves mankind. He only says to us, “’Do not be afraid; only believe’ in Me.”
Here enters now St. Paul’s own story of unanswered prayer, that is, unanswered according to his will but fully answered according to the will of God. Despite the fact that Paul in his early days was a murderous thug towards the Church persecuting Jesus Christ, he was nevertheless converted to Christ on the Road to Damascus when he saw a vision of our Lord. If you remember his story, he was blinded by the Light of Christ for three days after which he was healed by “a certain disciple . . . named Ananias” (Ac. 9:1-31; 22:1-21; 26:1-23). From that point on, Paul became a formidable proponent of Christianity and a perpetual thorn in the side of those who once embraced him as their colleague and brother-in-arms. From their hands and for the sake of the Lord Whom he once vociferously persecuted, he was forced to endure much both physically and spiritually though he did so gladly. The apostolic signs of miracles and wonders and mighty deeds were accomplished by him so that he lacked nothing by comparison to the other Apostles of our Lord, and he far excelled those pretenders and would-be self-aggrandizers who so impressed the Corinthians (2 Cr. 12:11-13). Here was a man in whom truly the Holy Spirit was evident in all that he did.
And yet, this man – this saint par excellence – could not be healed of a malady plaguing him inspite of pleading with the Lord three times to relieve him of it! Is there anyone more worthy of healing than the Apostle St. Paul? Why would God’s answer be no? How long the Apostle waited between each prayer is unknown to us. Every indication is that it was his pointed focus on at least three occasions. He was intent about this . . . . . . . . . serious about being healed. But, God’s response was very different from that hoped for and desired by the Apostle.
This raises the question for us: why does God not answer our prayers, or at least, why does He not answer them as we desire? Why does God seemingly – from a finite and utterly limited human perspective – take so long or not at all, again, insofar as we can see imperfectly? Before we delve a little more deeply, we must first determine if we have been praying according to the will of God, as Sacred Scripture teaches us to do (1 Jn. 5:14-15). This praying according to God’s will is to be attuned to God, to desire and want the things of God, that is, to want what God wants that reflect Him and His goodness. Praying according to the will of God assumes this. It assumes that we love His commandments and that we want to do – and are doing – “those things that are pleasing in His sight.” St. John the Theologian takes it a step further and tells us that God’s commandment is to “believe on the Name of His Son Jesus Christ and [to] love one another, . . . .” If we keep these, he says, we are assured that we abide in God and He abides in us (1 Jn. 3:21-24).
So, beloved, we have some soul-work to do similar to what we do when we’re preparing for Confession. Is my heart God’s? Do I want the things of God? Do I hunger and thirst after His righteousness and holiness? “Search me, O God, and know my heart,” we cry out with the psalmist, “try me, and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 138 [139]:23-24).
You see, I think when our prayers feel like they’re not being heard, maybe even ignored, that we assume the fault lies with God when, in truth, there may be obstacles in our own hearts and lives and wills preventing our prayers from being heard. Sacred Scripture teaches us that if we harbor or relish wickedness, delight in it, pursue it, this keeps God at bay, especially if it’s of an egregious nature (Ps. 65 [66]:18; Pr. 28:9; Is. 1:15). We can’t expect God to bless when we ourselves refuse to forgive or to love our enemies and pray for them (Sr. 28:1-7). Our Desert Fathers and Mothers are pretty clear about this that the path of God’s mercy and compassion must be open in us if we wish God to hear our prayers (The Way of the Fathers, #268). We cannot ask for ourselves what we would willfully deny another. When our hearts are torn between love for God and love for sin, we are fragmented and fractured spiritually, trying to serve two masters which we all know Jesus says is impossible (Mt. 6:24; Lk. 16:13). We cannot be, what St. James calls a double-minded man, halting between God and the devil, faith and unbelief (Jm. 1:6-8). Yet, what does God assure King Solomon when he’s consecrating the newly built Temple? “’[I]f My people, on whom My Name is called, should repent, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their evil ways,’” God promises, “’I also will hear from Heaven, and I will be merciful to their sins, and I will heal their land’” (2 Ch. 7:14). Humility before God and being repentant, therefore, is absolutely critical to clear the way for God and to keep it clear, and is the key to a healthy spiritual life.
If we have examined ourselves, as St. Paul exhorts us to do, to see if we are in the Faith or, perhaps said differently, if the Faith of Jesus Christ is in us (2 Cr. 13:5), and we have taken the necessary steps of repentance, confession, and amendment of life so that we can have clear consciences and souls, then we can look to divine Providence as the answer to delayed or “unanswered” prayers, as the case may be. This is what St. Paul discovered. Despite being the recipient of God’s healing as well as the benefactor of God’s healing to others, our Lord tells His Apostle, “Not this time, ‘My grace is sufficient for you.’ I am your strength, your foundation, your refuge, your deliverer Whom you love (Ps. 17 [18]:1-2). My strength is perfected in your weakness.” In this, St. Paul came to understand that there was a blessing in his prayer not being answered according to his will. God beholds the larger picture which is hidden from our view. Paul came to understand and appreciate that God was protecting him from pride and vainglory that the abundance of his ecstatic visions and revelations could possibly produce. Even saints, beloved, are not immune from spiritual warfare and have to wrestle spiritually with the passions and sins. That’s how they became saints! God always answers our prayers, though admittedly not as we might want, and “no” may just be one of those answers. But, when there is His “no” He gives us something far better, if we can trust in Him and His providential will. He constantly meets us in our weaknesses to grace us with His divine strength and power.
St. John Climacus tells us this:
All who ask and do not obtain their requests from God, are denied for one of the following reasons; because they ask at the wrong time, or because they ask unworthily and vaingloriously, or because if they received they would become conceited, or finally because they would become negligent after obtaining their request (Wisdom of the Divine Philosophers II, 130).
As St. Nectarius of Aegina would quickly remind us, “God fulfills your desires in a manner that you do not know” when we do not receive as we have prayed (Wisdom of the Divine Philosophers IV, 103).
And Evagrios the Solitary offers us this: “Often when I have prayed I have asked for what I thought was good,” he says,
and persisted in my petition, stupidly importuning the will of God, and not leaving it to Him to arrange things as He knows is best for me. But when I obtained what I asked for, I have been very sorry that I did not ask for the will of God to be done, because the thing turned out not to be as I thought (Wisdom of the Divine Philosophers II, 126).
It seems to me that this is the summit of all prayer – its superlative: to pray with our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ in His Passion, “’Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done’” (Mt. 26:39; Mk. 14:36; Lk. 22:42). When everything is said and done, this is the prayer we offer up in the Our Father, “’Thy will be done on earth [in my life] as it is in Heaven.’” Because of our Lord Jesus we can rest assured and confidant that He holds us in His nail-pierced hands. He encourages us to always pray and not give up because He loves us and sees far more clearly than we can and do, though we think we know better (Lk. 18:1-8). And, even if there should be some sinful obstacle in our lives inhibiting our prayers, the Fathers say “pray on.” “Though you be sinful beyond measure,” says St. John of Kronstadt, “still pray” (Wisdom of the Divine Philosophers IV, 93). Why? Because of Who God is: “For Thou art a good God and lovest mankind.” In due time, if our hearts are supple before Him and humble, He will show us the error of our ways so that we can repent, confess, and be absolved.
I leave you with this secret prayer of the priest at the Third Antiphon in the Divine Liturgy:
O Thou Who hast given us grace with one accord to make our common supplications unto Thee, and didst promise that when two or three are gathered together in Thy Name Thou wouldst grant their requests: Fulfill now, O Lord, the petitions of Thy servants as may be expedient for them, granting us in this world the knowledge of Thy Truth, and in the world to come Life Everlasting.
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor [of prayer] is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cr. 15:58).
Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
PROPERS:
2 Cr. 11:31-12:9
Lk. 8:41-56