MONDAY OCTOBER 28, 2024
MONDAY OF THE THIRTIETH WEEK OF THE ORDINARY TIME B
SAINTS SIMON AND JUDE, Apost (Feast)
Ephesians 2:19-22
Luke 6:12-19
THE POWER OF PRAYER
The evangelist, Luke, before any great events in the life of Jesus, always shows him in prayer before God. We have found Jesus in prayer before starting his public ministry, then before any great healing or wonders to be done, Jesus will always retire in prayer. Then again, when Jesus was to undergo the agony and even in the garden of Gethsemane he was in prayer. At the cross before his last breath, Jesus prayed to the Father. These highlights are quite necessary for Luke, because it shows great trust, dependance and closeness between Jesus and his Father.
Today, he again narrates how before Jesus chose his disciples who will later become apostles, he went into prayer all through the night. And in this choice of the apostles, we find the two saints whose feasts we are celebrating today, saints SIMON AND JUDE. These two saints Saint Simon the zealot and Saint Jude the Thaddeus were, as tradition says, partners, who worked and were martyred in the Persia area.
Jesus prayed at set times and even taught his disciples the discipline of prayer, the content of prayer and the necessity of prayer. In praying before his choice of apostles were made, Jesus again demonstrates to us the necessity of prayer and the intensity of this prayer. The Scripture says, “Jesus went out into the hills to pray; and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called his disciples, and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles.” The culture of all night prayer would have been an imitation of Jesus’ style of prayer. One would be imagining what actually he was telling God? But the great point to note is that Jesus was in the presence of God. And anything they discussed was not important as much. The whole idea of being in God’s presence is a great act of discipline and practice that is consoling and energizing.
So the great point is being present before God, contemplating his glory, and being open before God. It begins with the heart desiring God’s presence and offering one’s time and disposition to stay before this presence. It goes into submitting oneself, ones will, ones plans and ones aspirations, desires and longings to the maker of all things. But it does not end there. It also means, listening to his counsel, being in meditation, drawing strength and power from him and allowing God to direct the cause of one’s life.
Most times, having to stay in prayer before God is more personal than communitarian. It is more beneficial when done in isolation, or as an individual. Jesus did his as an individual. And the long hours of prayers is staying in God’s presence and may not have a set format. But within these hours, are times for contrition, praises, thanksgiving, reflections, promises made, and more importantly, God’s blessings, power and energy transfered to the soul as dews falls on the ground.
The power of prayer is necessary for our overall wellbeing. It is good for vital decisions. We can spend times in prayers before the blessing sacrament, in the solitude and silence of our homes and in privately planned retreat centres and monasteries. It is a veritable way of spiritual renewal and soul lifting. It is a practice we can occasional undertake for the health of our soul and even our body. It’s results are enormous and profiting as we find in Jesus’ prayer today.
Heavenly Father, draw us closer to you in prayer. May we hunger and seek your presence in our lives especially in the great events of our lives. And whenever we come to you, Father, renew our strength, forgive our sins, direct our ways, resolve our problems and attend to us. Make us hunger more for you and always desire to do your will through Christ our Lord
Fr Norbert Uchuno
