Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – 27 July 2025

I suppose any one of us could find in our lives some example of one of the great, perplexing mysteries of Christianity, the mystery of unanswered prayer – prayer perhaps for material wellbeing of one sort or another, for health, for peace of mind, any of a million things we have asked for and never received.

Today’s gospel reading underlines that mystery.  God likens himself to a father who cares for all his children’s needs.  “Ask, and you will receive.  Seek, and you will find.”  The gospel story seems to be saying that if we only keep at it, ask with persistence and trust, we shall surely get what we need.  Honest, appropriate prayer will never go unanswered.

The key it seems to me, is, always, to keep our prayer God-centred, to be sensitive, as we possibly can to the way that God chooses to act in the world.

And as he himself has told us so many times, his ways are not necessarily ours.  When some elements of the people or things that make up the world around us are such that they cause us some irritation, even suffering, it is our way to try to change those elements.  If we cannot, we usually project our way onto God and ask him to make those changes for us – to change people and things in the world so as to suit our desires.  But God will not do that.

That is not to say that God does not come to the aid of sufferers, those in need.  He does.  But he does so, he answers prayer, not by changing the world outside of the one who prays but rather by changing the one who prays, inside.  When a person who suffers turns to God in prayer, the prayer is answered not be doing away with the source of irritation but rather by changing the way that person experiences that irritation.  God does this through a number of very valuable gifts: the gift of understanding, the ability to see that there is a purpose to being human – anything that is seen to have a purpose is almost at once easier to bear; the gift of charity, the ability to love honestly even people who cause us suffering, the ability to forgive, the ability to avoid self-pity – a particularly toxic emotion, the ability to see every situation in perspective so that nothing can ever be experienced as so bad that it robs life of value, and finally, and at times the most valuable, the gift of the ability simply to endure.

All of these gifts, all of them help to end suffering, not by changing what bothers me but by changing me.

Time and again the Gospel tells us where to look for his presence.  The kingdom, God says, is within you.

Fr Andrew