The possibility of having an intimate relationship with God

Father Ed Vanorny
Homily from the Televised Mass, NewsCenter1
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 24, 2022

We have an interesting situation in this Gospel, where Jesus disciples have come asking him to teach them how to pray. And what’s interesting is that the Jewish people in those days, they believed that God could only be approached by their high priests in the temple. And so, the everyday Jewish person, like these disciples of Jesus, they didn’t even dare to think that they could be somehow familiar God, but here they come. Because they had noticed something different in the relationship that Jesus seemed to have with God when he prayed. And so they’re asking Jesus to help them to have something of that same relationship, and then as Jesus taught them how to pray it must have come as a bit of a surprise when Jesus told them that they could call almighty God their father.

So, Jesus presented his disciples with the possibility of having an intimate relationship with God, but that wasn’t the only thing that surprised them. There was also this new attitude toward God in prayer that Jesus was suggesting.

Like Abraham in that first reading whose attitude toward God and toward prayer was pretty bold. It was about as bold and daring as God is merciful. Or it was like that attitude in that story that Jesus told with the man coming to his friend late at night asking for some food. The attitude toward God and toward prayer that Jesus is suggesting is one of confidence, boldness, and persistence.

This is the attitude that Jesus says we should incorporate into our praying and our relationship with God. And there’s good reason to do that. And why? Because God is our father, and we are his children, and we know what Jesus says about the good things that a loving father like God will do for his children. With all that Jesus has been saying these past weeks about discipleship with him, his invitation today is to reacquaint ourselves with God our father I’ve God who desires us to know him as the source of all that is good. A God who wants us to be as bold and confident in our praying as he is bold and confident in answering our prayers.

And because of our baptism as beloved children of God we can pray that way and we can have a relationship with God with the same confidence, the same intimacy, that Jesus had with his father.