READINGS ‘Amalek came and waged war against Israel. Moses, therefore, said to Joshua, We need to defend and fight. Pick out certain men, and tomorrow go out and engage Amalek in battle.” (This battle will surely need the support of prayer to God for our side.) I will be standing on top of the hillwith the staff of God in my hand.” As it was–It went on as a heavy, long fight. Moses’ arms grew tired, since they were raised up. So “Aaron and Hur supported his arms to remain up, until the battle was won. From Exodus 17
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus…proclaim the word…pray by it…
be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient for you. From 2 Tim. 3.
Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. Finishing the parable, he said: When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? + BELOW: MOSES IN LONG, HARD PRAYER
We have an important call in them to be inregular prayer, and even prayer warfare as believers, for there is a battle of good versus evil.
As you know, in warfare sometimes one has to go courageously into situations that where we might not like to go. We might get sent to the front or the thick of the battle. While today’s first reading are about a physical battle, the deeper reality was of the spiritual warfare taking place in it. Moses is at the concluding parts of his long life, as Exodus 17 tells about, and he is still leading the Exodus people home to Israel, but there is a big physical and spiritual blockage in the way of fulfilling the dream.
Moses is in for the hardest prayer of his life to offer to God. He’s in the thick of it, and the leader of everyone’s prayer, up against the worst foe in the Amalekites. They are fighting versus all his people to the death to keep them from returning home to Israel, the God-given place for the Children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Moses is pleading God in prayer: ‘We have come this far by faith, O Lord. Will these viscous men of Amalek put a stop to us, right before our entrance over the Jordan to Jericho?! Lord, save your people!’
Here upon the finishing part of his life, God asks Moses to pray up the people to receive what God wants for them. God wants them back to the Holy Land, as He has wanted all along for them, but now the vicious Amalekites are attacking theJews. Amalek’s line is of the people of Esau, who were the separate tribe from Jacob, who forfeited blessings for material things, and are so enraged as a people versus Jacob’s line, that they all vow to kill every person in Jacob’s line. This includes everyone in Moses’ Exodus people, who had been in Jacob’s son Joseph’s line, living in Egypt, captive in slavery for 430 long years. Amalek’s people have slipped into wanting to take their blessing back, even while conducting a terribly immoral, evil life. Even all this time, they are determined to end Jacob’s line. They are hear for battle to the death. So Moses prays! He needs a lot of help, we see, from his two main supporters, Aaron and Hur, who help keep his arms up in prayer, helping him to hold on to his staff, the one used in miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea a generation ago. This trio of menoverlook the battle going on, trying to send prayer support to Joshua and the Jewish army for victory. It’s a long, hard battle. Thus, it is a long. hard prayer time for Moses—his most challenging one ever.
I wonder about such Bible stories, such as in the life of Moses, how this holy man must have never imagined the challenges waiting for him all life long, even right to its end, in today’s Exodus 17 story. But Moses’ praying was effective!
I think about us, and how we are put in times of distress, with just prayer as our main way through the trials.
Yet God wants his people to rise up in prayer like Moses did.
While we have had our normal and convenient times and places for prayer for regular living, it is much more deep the challenge to pray in inconvenience and difficulty and against the odds kinds-of-situations. These are the times for prayer warriors in spiritual warfare going on.
Moses and the Exodus Jews are camped in this place called Rephidim, just after a sojourn through the Desert of Sin. Rephidim means refreshment in translation, but they won’t have much of it, as Amalek forces come there.
We would just like to have our own refreshment place and ease of life, but then—boom!—a challenge comes to take it all away. You have to go into spiritual warfare.
Or else, looking at the world right now, even while we might have been living in some comfortable Christianity in the recent past, things are turning in the world which call for some serious praying and serious living in Jesus Christ. If the battle has not reached you, it still already is being waged elsewhere, and one can hear the sounds of spiritual warfare going on. The soul can hear it. It says: “Pray, and do not become weary in it!”
Where have you heard those words before? It’s in today’s gospel on the lips of Jesus in Luke 18. It is in his parable lesson. He ends his teaching by wondering who will apply it, with his haunting question: When the Son of Man returns (to the earth in the end), will He find faith on the earth (as in a praying people fighting the good fight of faith)? It’s a massive question.
It means that a people will rise up to be willing to go into serious prayer, to do soulful battle, as they see how many souls are on the line in this spiritual foray, as they see the moral and spiritual decay on the increase—like Moses, they will go to serious praying. They will need to do it with others’ help, too.
No matter what human effort we have in our life, it must have prayer behind it. When the going gets tough, then the praying must get tougher.
There is a battle being waged for the life of The Church and the good souls of the just to live out our promise and get to our Home destiny to God. There are dark forces and difficult, enemy people in the way of that dream. You are aware of that, right?! How is your present prayer situation? What is your prayer attitude? What are you participating in by prayer?
To deny that this is a time of spiritual warfare is to be looking for excuses for not to be praying. We had some parish members do a Jubilee Pilgrimage to the Padre Pio National Center in Barto, Pennsylvania. Written there was testimony that this modern mystic Pio could see the spiritual realm clearly, even the mortal sins of many. He stated: ‘Man’s pride is so exalted now, brazenly living against from God. Also, the demons on attack are greater than ever now, if you’d see them, well–it might be too intimidating for you, but prayer does avail much in the Lord Jesus, that if you do so seriously, you can be in hope and not in worry. ThePadre Pio center was all about prayer. It was a call to arms, there—i.e. Who is too comfortable in prayer? Snap out of it!
The letter of St. Paul to Timothy today tell his disciple to proclaim the gospel and live in the Word by prayer even when greatly inconvenience or uncomfortable by it, as in, out of one’s circle of comfort. Paul is asking his disciple to not get used to a limited view of things, but to be willing to venture out in The Lord.
I have an animal story that can possibly illustrate it best. It’s about how we can get used to a comfortable periphery, or trained to stay in our circle—but then a time comes when we have to break forth from it, to carry out what’s right for us. There was a big brown bear named “Chicago” in the zoo. He had born in the zoo and had lived in a 20 x 80 space all his life. But as he matured, a movement in the city formed (in animal rights) that convinced the zoo to set him free in a wild habitat that bears would like. So, the day came when they transported “Chicago”to bear country in southern Alaska. They set him free in Katmai National Park. Do you know what the bear did then for two weeks straight? He only walked in the same 20 x 80 space they had set him down in. It was what he was used to at the zoo—it was hard to get him leave that trained rectangle of space! But, for people, God has to get our prayer and actions out of the comfortable and to where we ought to go.
The National Park rangers persevered in convincing their new brown bear to venture forth at Katmai—and he did. He was born for that adventure. God hopes to expand our horizons for prayer and action, knowing that we are free in Him but in a spiritual realm to serve Him. God wants to soulfully use us in the growth of the kingdom of God to man. He wants us to notice more of the spiritual realm we are in and how we are asked to respond to it, especially as dark forces start mounting up against God’s own, like the Amalekites did versus Moses and the Exodus pilgrims heading home. That’s a lot of challenge in that call, but we were born for the adventure.
My last comment is just to give a senior living look at this Exodus 17 story. The prayer warrior Moses and his helpers were over a hundred years old each in it. Moses was 120 years old, actually, in his passing on Mt. Nebo, not too long after this battle story. It tells me that long after one’s physical strength and abilities have passed, one still has the strongest faith skill left in them: prayer. Moses could pray them into victory, and he did. Seniors—there’s your example—and your even way short of 120 years old still! Pray, pray, pray!
End of Homily………………………………..
Homily notes in the trimmed-out pile.
A/ The tribe of Amalek not only refused peace terms in this account but actively sought to annihilate the Israelites (also see Deut. 24:17-18). The Talmud and midrash state how viscous and violent the Amalekites acted. Amalek, grandsonof Esau, commanded his tribe to seek the murderous wipe-out of any descendants of Jacob. (It was thus said that as long as one descendant of Amalek is alive, he will attempt to annihilate the Jewish people. Centuries later, in the Book of Esther chapter 3, this almost comes to fruition in the person of King Haman, a descendant of Amalek. So this was not a matter of simple dispute over territory but a struggle for the very survival of the Jewish race in the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yet The Lord claimed to be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and God of the Living. See Jesus in Matt. 22 or St. Peter of the line of faith in Acts 3. )
B/ Moses and his people had some serious enemies, and only prayer could help them versus their attack. Like it or not, by our relationship with Christ Jesus, we make some serious enemies, seen and unseen, who must be dealt with by a prayer warrior mentality and a spiritual warfare awareness.
C/ In looking awhile online at the 1871 painting (which I put into the homily as an illustration) of Exodus 17, of Moses and two others praying for victory, artist John Everett Millais (most famous for another painting called October Chill) showsMoses to be old and very tired, but his brother and other loyal Israelite friend keep him praying—because it will decide the war below. They lift him up and keep his arms and hands up in petition to God. That scene should be ours as well. To live the challenging messages of Jesus, it takes a lot of faith, and prayer support.
D/ Why should we heed this message? In the Gospel today, we hear Jesus wondering about the end times’ people, if they will be casual, relaxed and compromised in some fears and in avoidance of Truth living. Or not?! Jesus asks: “When the Son of Man comes, as in Glory, will he find faith on the earth?” Will He?
In other words, will He find we people living fully in His message, whole-heartedly in its practice, and alive in their Faith— or not? The big question of Luke 18:8 begs to its listeners, like ourselves, to answer it with a “Yes, You will find it, Lord, here amongst us of your Church today, living it out all by faith.
E/ I started to write an Advent homily to follow up this message later, but then instead I put the message succinctly in the Pastor’s October letter. You’ll see it there.
I recall the “All Year Christmas Song” and its lyrics by artist Randi Stonehill, as he sings a lament for those who don’t really know or live by the Christmas story. It wonders aloud—who’ll tell them of Jesus? The action starts with prayer: how much am I praying for people to come out of the dark so to know Jesus? How much in faith do I pray for sinners to repent and come home to God? Will He find those people in new faith joined to me in active faith, upon The Lord’s Return?
I wonder if this Christmas they’ll begin to understandThe Jesus that they celebrate is much more than a man
‘Cause the way the world is I don’t see how people can deny
The only way to save us was for Jesus Christ to die
And I know that if St. Nicholas was here he would agree
That Jesus gave the greatest gift of all to you and me
They led him to the slaughter on a hill called Calvary
And mankind was forgiven when they nailed him to the tree
Vs. 2
But most of all the children they’re the ones I hope will learn
That Jesus is our savior and he’s going to return
And Christmas isn’t just a day and all days aren’t the same
Perhaps they’ll think about the word and see it spells his name
And I know that if St. Nicholas was here he would agree
That Jesus gave the greatest gift of all to you and me
They led him to the slaughter on a hill called Calvary
And mankind was forgiven, mankind was forgiven
We were all forgiven when they nailed him to the tree
So Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Hoo-hoo. Ooo-ooh.
I wonder if this Christmas they’ll begin to understand…*
(*It’s a merry Christmas when it’s served as a Mass for Christ? When it’s a celebration of Mercy of a Savior come down to us from Heaven: The Lord Jesus, child of Mary, born of Bethlehem, David’s city.