A Homily for the fifth Sunday after Easter

+ One of the sheer graces of the monastic vocation is our immersion in the recapitulation of the Word of God by the various offices of the Sacred Liturgy throughout the day—leading, of course (if we have the sense to do our part and maintain the external discipline and interior disposition of recollection) to ever deeper contemplation of its content and meaning, and of its import in our ongoing quest for the conversion of our lives and for greater fidelity to Christ in the vocation He has, in His mercy, given us.
 
This fifth Sunday after Easter is no exception. Our Lord’s teaching “Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, He will give it to you in My name… ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” echoes from first Vespers through to Second, and is expounded by St Augustine at Matins with the assurance that “he who believes in Christ as he should truly asks in His name and receives what he asks for: provided he asks for what is not opposed to his own eternal salvation.”
 
In a sense, this is “asking”, or “pray earnestly”, Sunday. And indeed, we each have much for which to pray! Our needs are many and varied. Sometimes they are urgent—danger can threaten from without, with real enemies (even wolves in sheep’s clothing) out to destroy us for their own insidious, narcissistic or ideological gratification. Danger can also arise from within—pride, envy, lust, sloth, etc. (all the classic snares of the world, the flesh and the devil). Earnest prayers for protection and for the grace of perseverance, particularly in times of crisis or suffering, are rightly frequently upon our lips.
 
Frequently our prayers are predicated by the understandable, but nevertheless presumptuous, question: When? When will Almighty God give me that for which I am praying? We, who are in time and space, like to look at clocks and calendars and to count days and set dates. “I have prayed for this every day since…” we complain, almost threatening to stop so doing if an answer is not promptly forthcoming!
 
St Augustine’s has more to teach us: “…he receives what he prays for at a time when it is expedient for him. For certain things are not denied us, but only withheld, to be given to us at a fitting time.” What we are given, and when, and even by whom and where, are all in the hands of God’s Providence. A delay in receiving that for which we pray may provide a much-needed opportunity for our purification and preparation (the delay itself may be a salutary penance). Gifts given by Almighty God may be all the more fruitfully received in circumstances different from those we ourselves may have expected. So too, the chosen instrument of God’s grace may be quite unexpected: in God’s plan persons or circumstances not at all of our own imagining and quite outside what we may think is the norm can bring to us all that for which we have prayed, and much more besides, utterly humbling us before such an unexpected and unmerited outpouring of His mercy and grace.
 
Yes, we must pray earnestly for what we need. Yes, we must persevere in that prayer, confident that it shall be heard and answered in the Providence of Almighty God. And yes, we must be ready for an answer—God’s answer—one which shall humble us, and which shall call us forth in His service with renewed strength and conviction.
 
The importance of our earnest prayer is underlined by Church’s Sacred Liturgy on each of the first three days of the coming week, in “Rogationtide”, when Conventual Mass is preceded by the Rogation procession with the litany of the saints and the associated prayers. Let us ensure that we do not fail to pray them as we should, with heart, mind and soul, for ourselves, for the Church (in particular for our bishop) and for the world.
 
Of course, our prayers are answered for a purpose—for God’s purposes—whether we fully comprehend them or not. As St James teaches us in the Epistle (and as we are reminded in the chapter at Terce, Sext and None), we must “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” As St Paul chided St Timothy: “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.” (2 Tim. 1:6) For, as today’s collect insists, we are not called simply to think what is right, we are, under God’s guiding hand, to put what is right and true into practice.
 
“He who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing,” St James teaches us. In these days of earnest prayer, beginning at this altar this morning, let us beg Almighty God for the grace of perseverance, that the graces He has given to us, and those He is even yet to bestow, may ever be used unto His glory and for the salvation of souls. +