A Homily to be Preached on Sunday 29th July 2007

Homily – 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year C) Luke 11:1-13
28th July 2007

Have you ever wondered about the smirk on a camel’s face? Well, the Arabs have a story to explain it. You see, Muslims speak about the 99 Names of God. They talk about God the Merciful, God the Creator, God the All-knowing, God the Wise and so on. But, they say, these 99 names are not enough and that He has a hundredth name which men don’t know. However, the camel does know, and that is why he has a smug self-satisfied look on his face.
However, despite having 99 Names for God – speaking of His Power, His Mercy and His Goodness, nowhere amongst them is found the name Father. Maybe this is a surprise to us, because we’re so used to calling Him Father, but it is something uniquely Christian. Indeed, for the Christian, Father is the most important name we use when we talk about God, and when we talk to God. It says more about Him and our relationship with Him than any other name we can give Him.

God the Father - A Uniquely Christian Doctrine
It is from Christ Himself that we learned to call God Father. We read in the Gospels that God the Son invites us to share in His Sonship, and make our relationship with God the Father the centre of our lives. We read today that the disciples were fascinated by Christ’s prayer. They must have seen Him spend many hours in conversation with the Heavenly Father, and finally worked up the courage to ask Him to teach them to pray.
Being taught how to pray is no small thing. The disciples are asking Jesus what to say to God one-to-one. In prayer before God, there is no room for pretence or falsehood, and so the prayer that Jesus gives us tells us who God really is, and what kind of people He wants us to be.
And so, He tells us to call God “Our Father.” What a revelation this is! It’s one thing believing that God created us and the entire universe; that He is Good and All-Powerful. It is quite another to learn that He wants us to call Him Father. He wants us to know that He has a Father’s love for us, and that we should not be frightened to consider ourselves His sons and daughters.

Growing as a Child of God - The Centrality of Trust
In the words of the Our Father, there is a whole course in Christian living. Whole books have been written about this prayer, but perhaps one of the most important things that the Our Father teaches us is the great virtue of trusting in God the Father. After all, the relationship between parent and child is marked by the fact that a child flourishes by trusting his parents. A child thrives and grows into a well-balanced adult by knowing that his parents want the best for him, and that whatever goes wrong, home is a place where they can return for comfort and even forgiveness.
If this is true of earthly parents, how much more is it true of Our Heavenly Father. By inviting us to call Him Father, He is reassuring us that we can trust Him and rely on Him. He asks us to trust Him for our daily bread, and to know that He is a God of forgiveness. Like the father of the prodigal Son, we are reassured that He will be quick with His forgiveness if we stray.
As a Father, we can also trust that God wants us, His children, to grow; and so He gives us a way of life. We are called to imitate Him in our forgiveness of others and in our concern that His Kingdom should prevail on Earth, as well as in Heaven. This, however, is only possible if we learn to trust Him first. We can only have the courage to put our own interests aside and be forgiving, if we know that we too are forgiven when we fall. We can only live a life of Christian love, if we first realise that God loves us first.

The Adult Faith of a Child of God
We must also have an adult understanding of what it means to be a father. I’m sure that the parents here know that being a good father or a good mother means sometimes saying ‘no’ to their children, and that to grow, sometimes children have to learn some difficult lessons. So, as God’s children we will face trials that seem to make no sense to us and may even cause us to doubt the existence of a loving God. This is why we need to cultivate a keen awareness of God as Our Father. We can only face the genuine difficulties, and struggles and sorrows and set-backs of life, if we know that God is our loving Father, and that whatever happens to us will be for the best and will lead us to the happiness of His Kingdom. He does not give us scorpions instead of eggs.
This trust is not always easy, but the Father has made known His goodness in many ways. Above all, He has sent us His Only Begotten Son to show us the path of Sonship and to encourage and strengthen us, and has poured God the Holy Spirit into our hearts to guide us along that path, and to fill us with the Divine Love that makes it possible to grow as His sons and daughters.

Blessed be the name of the Lord – Father, Son and Holy Spirit!