Sermon Cloud

Children today are smart.

I was talking this week with a priest friend who recently visited in one of the elementary schools attached to his parish. During this visit, he happened to chat with one young boy who was probably about 12 years old - let's call him Johnny.

My friend ran into him in the schoolyard during recess and since the boy was rather quiet, he began to ask some questions. "Johnny, I haven't seen you at the church lately" ... "Well Father, the thing is that I'm very busy" .... "Doing what?" ... "Playing hockey" ... "On Saturday nights?" ... "Yep" ... "And what about Sunday mornings?" ... "I play hockey then too" ... "and Sunday evenings" ... "Yep, playing hockey" ... "Johnny, what do you think Jesus will say when you get to heaven" ... "He'll want to know how many games I won".

When I was Johnny's age, I didn't have much of a choice. If my parents said we were going to Mass, there was not much we could do to get out of it. We tried from time to time, and we didn't like the fact that we couldn't always spend our weekends playing with friends, but looking back now, these interruptions in our social schedule didn't do us much harm, and they even may have done us some good.

In today's gospel, the apostles were sidetracked when they went to Jesus complaining that some strangers, who had not jumped through all the hoops they had during their training, were actually healing in the Lord's name! Jesus surprised them with the answer, "Whoever is not against us is for us" (Mk 9:38-43). Like little children, they wanted things to go their way, but were surprised when their Teacher didn't answer in the way they expected. I suspect it didn't do them too much harm either.

How many times do we pray to God, asking for things, and get frustrated when He seems not to answer according to OUR will? In the words of one of my seminary professors, "prayer is a lesson in humility". It's a lesson that human beings sometimes need to learn more than once in life. Humility is what the apostles learned in today's gospel. It's also the subject of James' comments to the early Christian community in the second reading (Js 5:1-6), and believe it or not, the struggle to learn humility has been part of the human condition since the time of the Old Testament, and the first reading we heard today (Num 11:16-29).

As we come in prayer before the Lord each day, let us do so with an attitude of humility - thanking Him for the many blessings we enjoy. When it comes to stating our petitions, let us not be afraid to be surprised by the answer we might get to the questions we ask, and by the unexpected blessings He has prepared for us.