TUESDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 10:38-42)
The story of Martha and Mary. The teaching of Our Lord on prayer begins here. We will be going , in the following days , into the Our Father , trust and some basic attitudes towards prayer. In this passage Our Lord is telling us about listening in prayer. How necessary it is just at times to sit at his feet and quietly open the ears of our hearts and let His word come in. In that silence He reveals Himself to us.
If I may there is another aspect of this story which has always attracted me. It is the fact that a teacher, Jesus, would be teaching a woman. In our day this is a part of the story which we would probably not even avert to. In Jesus’ time for a teacher to have a woman sit at his feet, a sign of being a disciple, was radical. Something new which must have caused some people surprise. It was not done.
Jesus always seems to be doing things like this. It is almost like He is deliberately trying to get peoples attention. Doing good on the Sabbath, picking wheat, eating with the publicans...even the men He called to be His apostles...He challenged people to think beyond the safe, secure boundaries and to look beyond...in this simple scene of Mary at this feet Jesus is opening up a new world.

WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:1-4)
The first thing which comes to mind in praying this prayer is the absolute poverty we have before God. It is an overpowering thought that the Good God permits a weak human being to look up and say “Father”. It would be so safe if all I could do would be to be able to think about God. This in itself is something to marvel at....but God is not satisfied with that. He wants a conversation with us, communion.
It is all pure gift...we use expressions such as: my prayer, I am going to pray....as though it was our work. We take possession of a gift and deny by our attitude that it is pure gift. No one can look to God except those whom He permit s. No one can enter into this conversation except those whom He invites ...we respond to this gift, to the invitation...but the initiative is from God. He, as my mother used to remind us, grabs us by the back of the neck and lifts us to Him before we can go to Him.

THURSDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:5-13)
Many years ago I worked in a small country parish in Japan. There was a kindergarten attached to the Church. During the summer months when the children were let out at 11:30AM there would be at least one child who would want ice-cream. The little shop outside the gates of the Church was the source of this temptation.
It being so close to lunch time, no matter how much the child cried the mother would not give in. However, most mothers did come prepared with some sort of little cookie. Usually this would not alleviate the child’s need, the crying would continue...only ice-cream. The mother would be forced to pick the child up without ice-cream and without cookie and carry him or her away.
I often reflected on those scenes and said to myself: that is the way I act in front of God. Crying for what I think is good for me, seeing e but the ice-cream, and missing the gifts which He is giving me.

FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR Luke 11:15-26.....
To attribute to the devil the work of God....what a blasphemy
They saw marvelous things happening, things they could not explain...devils being defeated...the blind seeing what is the meaning of all this? Why didn’t they say: this is the work of God....why did they have to say: the work of the devil?....fear, perhaps....maybe there is something inside of people that makes evil more comprehensible than good....isn’t it true that evil, no matter what form it may take, almost captures us.
We do not have to exert too much energy, psychic or emotional to grasp the reality of evil...but good, we either let it go by like a summer breeze or else take it for granted.
Heaven and earth are indeed full of the glory of God....the disciple is asked to proclaim that glory...to announce the marvelous workings of God.

SATURDAY OF THE TWENTY- SEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Luke 11:27-28)
The other day I got involved in a discussion about relevancy, one of the many buzz words of this day and age. We came to the conclusion that not everything in the Gospel is relevant to “ all of the people all of the time “...life cycles are different.
I need to hear different things at different times
Mary is a good example of someone who was not afraid to listen to the new things. She did not stop listening at the Annunciation, she listened to the Gloria on Christmas night, she listened to “a sword shall pierce your heart”, she heard her son say “ I must be about my Father’s business” finally, “woman behold your son”.....she listened and she came to understand and to live her vocation.
Our lives with Christ are always deepening...our lives change…Christ wants to speak to us where we are...He wants us to respond where we are...in the quiet of our hearts to listen...having heard to act on the Word.