Scripture Reflections for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“the point is find your role in the theo-drama, take up your position, whatever it is, and get into this great fight because...the battle with Amalek is far too important”

“Never read the Bible in such a way that it gives warrant to the claim that God is violent. If you're reading it that way you're not reading it in terms of 'the Lamb standing as though slain.'”

“Friends, reread these texts in light of the Book of Revelation, in light of 'the Lamb standing as though slain' opens the seals and then in your own way, according to your own gifts, in your own state of life, enter into this great struggle against Amalek”

“Basic point, Christians, you're never saved alone. We never engage in the spiritual struggle alone. At least we shouldn't.”

“Christian prayer is multi-layered and has varied aspects. If we consistently ignore many of these aspects, then our prayer will lack a certain depth.”

“We need that spiritual strength to do as Jesus says, to pray always and not lose heart...maintaining our trust in God who loves us and will always attend to our needs”

“I have seen again and again that the first step to success is to believe that it is possible. We must trust that our God is a faithful God who will not abandon us. God can and will make a way, but that “way” almost always involves other people.”

“when all these forms of prayer are used together: aspirations, offering our labor, particular times of meditation, plus communal or familial recitation of vocal prayers (rosary, chaplets, etc.), we strive to be like Moses, with our hands always uplifted in prayer”

“Prayer is conversation with God that is best done with humility, gratitude, honesty, and trust. Sometimes prayer can go dry because of little things that get in the way. Sometimes obstacles are big. The obstacles mostly come from us.”

“If our life is a struggle, we must know that in Jesus the victory has already been won. To be in the struggle is to be winning the struggle because we rely not on our own strength but on the cross of Christ.”

“Thus constant prayer and love for the Word of God are two pillars in the life of a believer and sure ways to stay close to God always”

“all meaningful missions are always in the here and now, never outside of or distant from the present moment. Mission always begins and ends with the ones closest to us in the here and now.”

“A little prayer is intrinsically an enormous act of faith. And Jesus ends today’s gospel by asking whether the Son of Man will find any faith on earth.”

“We are all in mission to one another. When we meet one another in prayer, we leave behind our judgments, our prejudices and biases, our seeing each other as so different from ourselves.”

“Every day, God gives us moments to reflect, regroup, and look to where we can improve for tomorrow. But in this busy world...We get so caught up in life, that we fail to take this time to listen to God. We fail to spend time with Him, and grow that relationship. We get distracted.”

“Prayer isn’t about persuading God to do what we want, however noble that may be; it is about inviting God to mould us in faith into what he wants for us. Prayer can’t change God; it should change us.”

“To enter into the perspective of eternity is an invitation to enter into a deeper relationship with the God who ‘stepped out’ from eternity into the vulnerability of time and space in Jesus Christ”

“It is also possible that God’s justice may not necessarily be satisfying to us in the way we want it. What we can be sure of is that he is just and does deeds of justice, but not according to our human reckoning.”

“Prayer is the articulation of desire. It is bringing our desires into the open, making a clean breast of them before God.”

“The key to obtaining what is good is prayer and the key to prayer is faith. When faith runs out, prayer fails. When prayer fails we don't get the good things that we want”

“Maybe the best way we can hand down the faith is by putting the moves of the faith in the bodies of the next generation. Don't privatize the faith, make it something interior. Rather, let it get into the body as something concretely practiced.”

“the one thing you don't do in the spiritual struggle is sit on the sidelines. I don't care if you're weak or strong, I don't care if you're young or old, I don't care if you're educated or not, there's a role for you.”