Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
I have the great privilege of teaching the capstone course for the English major at the University of Dayton. The course focuses on the question of calling or vocation—what that is, why it matters, how one figures out one’s calling or vocation, and so forth. A number of readings in the course talk about how important writing and talking about our stories is to discovering our vocations.
Last week (drawing on a wonderful exercise that a colleague of mine developed for the course), I asked my students to think about the story of their life in chapters. That is, if they were to write a story of their life (which they will soon do), what would the chapters be? How many would there be? What would the title of each chapter be? And what would the important events, episodes, or themes of each chapter be?
In class, I asked them to share a bit—how many chapters in their lives, the title of each chapter, and then the content of just one of the chapters. I let them know in advance that I would have them talk about just one of the chapters so that they would know that they need to write at least one of the chapters in a way that they would be willing to share with the whole class.
One student, I’ll call him Paul, shared the chapter that he wrote about his first years at UD. In his first year (or maybe a bit before that—I’m not sure), his mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And she became very ill. I don’t know how Paul was able to finish out the semester at UD. I asked him about that in class, and he said that he talked with his dad about whether he should come home and that his dad was very wise in advising him to stay at UD where he would have good work to do. Coming home, his dad reasoned, would probably be even harder.
During this time, Paul confessed, he was unable to pray. He is a very earnest Catholic. I’m not sure I have encountered a more earnest Catholic student at UD. But he just couldn’t do it. And it makes sense. He was afraid that if he prayed for his mother’s healing and she didn’t receive healing then his faith would be profoundly challenged.
In our reading for today, Jesus says “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find.”
This word from Jesus is not an easy one. We are called to ask and to seek and we have no idea what we will receive or if or what we will find. What will the answer to our prayer be? There’s no telling. And will it strengthen our faith or bring it to crisis?
So, as Paul was telling his story (and I was thinking of my own mother’s precipitous decline at the age of 59 from breast cancer), I get it. I empathize with his inability to pray during that time.
When I can’t pray, I am deeply grateful for the Our Father. I don’t have to come up with it. All I have to do is recite it. And, it’s really good!
What are your favorite parts of the Our Father? My favorite phrases are: “Hallowed be thy name,” “Thy will be done,” “As we forgive those who trespass against us,” and “Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” Okay—I pretty much love the whole thing. But my point is this: it’s not up to me to come up with the right prayer or the right feeling about praying. It’s only up to me to pray. And if I’m in a place wherein I’m not good at prayer, I can always recite the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray.
And I can go to Mass and receive the bread. And I can listen (I don’t have to craft it—just listen to it) the homily.
One of the things I love the most about being Catholic is that it isn’t all on me. In the Reformation, Martin Luther put a lot on Christians. For him, it was not enough to go to Mass or pray the Our Father. One had to have genuine, authentic, for-real faith. I’ll confess that sometimes I just don’t. I think that, actually, is what makes faith . . . faith. If you have certainty about your faith then it’s not really faith.
So, when students in my class or advisees (they are SO young) tell me of their troubles—depression, thoughts of or attempts at suicide, domestic violence, a dying mother—I really struggle. It is hard to live with human suffering in concrete terms.
But I can still pray the Our Father. I can still go to Mass and receive the Eucharist. I can tithe. I can listen to another amazing homily by Father Satish or Father Bob or Father Jim or Father Joe or some other Marianist who is generous with his time! And then, once again and despite my limits of faith, I see Jesus.
And I thank God for the ways in which the Church is still the Church, flawed as it is.
Sue Trollinger