Monday of the 7th Week of the Year
May 16, 2016 8:30am
Readings: James
3.13-18
Mark
9.14-29
In today’s gospel incident, the
disciples ask Jesus why they are unable to drive the evil spirit out of this
apparently young man.
Jesus says: “This kind can only come out through prayer.”
From various passages in the
gospels, I think it is fair to say that Jesus’ prayer was fundamentally a
communion with the Father.
At times, he did speak words
right from his heart.
But often, he simply was – he was
with the Father.
He was quiet, silent, listening
with his heart and then his mind.
His prayer definitely must have
involved this listening to the Father as when he was discerning the Father’s
will about his suffering.
So, I am thinking that it is this
kind of prayer, maybe primarily listening that Jesus has in mind when he says
that this deaf and mute man can only be healed through prayer.
This kind of prayer frees us from
being deaf, as the young man in the gospel is.
It does this because it makes us
listen:
listen to God, to the quiet
promptings of God about who we are and what we are to do;
and listen to others around us
and take in what is really going within the them.
It is through this prayerful
listening that we can be freed from our deafness and become more of a source of
healing and wholeness for one another.
The result is that this kind of
prayer also frees us from being mute, as the young man in the gospel is.
It does this because it enables
us to speak the positive, healing, constructive and life-giving words of God.
So, I am saying that this kind of
quiet, listening prayer can free us from being spiritually deaf and mute and
then through that, enable us to be a source of healing for others.
