17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 The gospel message today is not only about what to pray, as we see with the Lukan version of the Our Father, but also our attitude to God as we pray. We do not know in detail how St John the Baptist thought of God but we know that he expected a fiery judgement. The image that Jesus uses, that of a Father who surpasses in generosity and love all human fatherhood, inspires confidence. Christian prayer is a cooperation with grace. We cannot think that we can bribe God or impress Him with our virtue or our righteousness. This, as we know from St Paul, is impossible. As a Pharisee of the Pharisees he gave it a good go, so much so, that he persecuted the followers of "The Way." He recalls in his letter to the Philippians: "If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of the Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless." (Phil 3: 4-6) In coming to know Christ, Paul finds that he discovers truly the love of the Father and who it is to whom he has been praying for the whole of his life, yet with the wrong attitude. This revelation transforms him in a radical way. He cannot remain in his of way of prayer because his attitude to God and reality has been fundamentally altered: "Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings be becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." (Phil 3: 7-11) Thus, a truly Christian attitude of prayer conforms us to Christ and brings us to experience something of the love that the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father, in the Holy Spirit. We cannot return to the old ways predicated on pleasing an unpleasable God or placating a remorseless and punishing Father.