Catholic Carmelite Church of the Pater Noster (Our Father), Mount of Olives, Jerusalem 2018.

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come….”          Luke 11:1-2.

Click here to read today’s Sunday Mass Readings.

Click on words highlighted in red for further information. 

I confess to being surprised, not to say ashamed, when I came across the Church of the Pater Noster (Our Father in Latin) in Jerusalem during my journey to the Holy Land in 2018. Yet there it was, with the most famous prayer of all in 140 languages!  You can see seven of them in the photo above. Somehow I had missed this special place in my plans and came across it accidentally. It claims to be in the actual site where Jesus taught his followers the most well-known prayer of all. But note there are two occasions in the gospels where Jesus teaches this prayer, one in Galilee (Matthew 6:1-15) and this one in today’s gospel. Today’s is shorter than the one in Matthew (which is the one we use at Mass). Perhaps Jesus was making sure that his followers would remember this prayer to Our (and His) Father before he completed his mission and died in Jerusalem. He may have prompted one of his disciples to ask this question, and maybe they recalled it after the first few words were spoken. This church is located near the site of a fourth-century church built by the Emperor Constantine over a cave reputed to be the site where Jesus taught (or reinforced) this prayer. Today’s reading goes on to have Jesus say that when we ask God for a favor, we should be persistent. In a short parable, he talks of someone asking another for a favor, but he encounters resistance. However, through persistence, Jesus says, he succeeded in getting what he wanted. And then Jesus proclaims these immortal words:

Ask and you will receive;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Pretty big promises! And they speak of God’s eternal and boundless hospitality! Today there is even a giant industry solidly based on that concept. We are always told in the next breath that the answer we get from God might not be the one we hope for. And if we ask for something which would not be to our good or the good of others, then one cannot expect God to answer, at least not in the way we anticipate! But given all that, then we should hope for God’s goodness to materialize in one way or another, in the same way as a father takes care of his child. 

The other two readings are challenging. One talks of the approaching doom of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the other of the mercy of God, taking pity on those who were not born within the confines of the Hebrew people, but who are now welcome into the new people of God. As the two cities in the first reading were, according to Scripture, destroyed for their sins, it seems there were not even ten people within them worth saving! And here we are on tricky ground. Sodom has given its name to a specific situation, and you can read the legal definition of that here. Scholars today generally prefer to read the sin of Sodom as inhospitality, which, in the context of the Book of Genesis, does make sense. Just a few verses prior in the Book of Genesis, Abraham insisted on his three visitors being received well, offered food and refreshment, and was generally a wonderful example to us of what hospitality is all about (see last Sunday’s reflection of this event by the terebinth of Mamre). If you think of the traditional accusation against the two cities, it is really a challenge to think of them as both being completely gay! Another way of thinking through this passage is to remember that the two angels, the two visitors that are the source of all the trouble, do not actually have sexual characteristics at all! These two appear as human, but are not. Is it perhaps their superhuman characteristics that were the source of their attraction to everyone, which of course does not excuse the inhospitality they received. The whole thing is still  very controversial even after all these centuries! I guess it is up to each one of us to decide what this passage is all about, and we’ll leave it at that.

Then there is the second reading. The idea of hospitality can be seen here too. Paul seems to be talking to people who were once pagans, not converts from Judaism. They were born into a world where they were “dead in transgressions” against God’s law of life and faith, but are now “brought to life along with him”. That reminded me of the earliest baptisms, and the earliest baptismal fonts. The were big and deep. One went down at least three steps until deep in water, then up again three steps on the other side. The baptized person had died to the old life, and risen into the new! It was highly symbolic and made a great deal of sense. Our Baptist brothers and sisters still receive this grace, “total immersion”, in almost the same way. 

The Baptistry of St. John the Baptist, 2017, Poitiers, France.

Here is such a baptistry in Poitiers, France, to the south-west of Paris, dating from the 4th century, the oldest church building in France and possibly one of the oldest Christian buildings anywhere! It might originally have been connected the local river Clain to ensure that the water was fresh, carrying away the old sins and giving rebirth to a new Christian. And it was on this spot that a new person would have been received into the flock of God’s children and promised an eternity of joy in God’s love. 

So today’s readings do seem to have the theme of hospitality as a golden thread. The word itself comes originally from the Latin word “hospes”. Interestingly, that word means both the one offering hospitality (the “host”) and the one receiving it. It is also the root of the words hotel, hostel, and hospice. All that came to English through French, which came from Latin. And note the German for hospitality is Gastfreundschaft “gast” meaning guest, and “freund” meaning friend, both of them readily understandable in English, and easily carrying the same meaning (“schaft” is the state, or result, when combining the two other words). And remember when Jesus sent out his disciples to teach the Word, if they encountered inhospitality, they were to “shake the dust from their feet”. That is somewhat more irenic than bringing down disaster and destruction upon them! But when it works, there is nothing like it. A warm welcome, a helping hand, an encouraging smile, a loving embrace, a pat on the back, these and a thousand other marks of friendship, love and human assistance are what make life worthwhile, and they are what makes God happy and what makes us happy! So help us, Lord, to be bringers of peace and happiness to all we meet, so that your love will shine through us and will make of us your true disciples, and perhaps invite others to the same.

“True Hospitality for Good”, the flagship philanthropic program for IHG Hotels.

THERE MAY BE SOMEONE YOU KNOW WHO MIGHT LIKE TO HEAR THIS MESSAGE; PLEASE FORWARD IT TO THEM. THANK YOU.

Reflections on next Sunday’s Mass Readings will be posted on Wednesday.

Please send your reactions to: RogerJohn@aol.com 

©SundayMassReadings.com