Two weeks ago the lay leaders of Mtaa wa Madaraka (Madaraka street) came to me asking me to come and say Mass for a spiritual revival of their community, their Small Christian Communities and lapsed Catholic belonging by residence to their Mtaa...
I was very pleased that they asked for this. The nature of the intention of the Holy Mass showed me clearly how sensitive they are to their living faith and its actual practicing in daily lives. We planned that I would come today, September 8, at 5pm, to fulfill their request.
And so we did. The members of the Mtaa prepared the location and setup of the Mass very well. As it was the Feast of the Birth of Our Lady, I focused in my homily on the character of Our Lady in times when She faced troubles. The place we said Mass today was the same courtyard of a newly constructed guest house, where we had that infamous wedding reception a week ago, when we came back home lat at night hungry!
So, as a base of my homily, I used a situation at the wedding at Kana of Galilee, where the wedding party went short of wine. Our Lady was the first to discover the problem. She used this opportunity that arose to teach us a very important lesson on the nature of a real prayer and our relation to God. I wanted to use this example to show my fellow Christians a way to solve problems they were talking about to me when they came to ask me to come for this Mass. And they seemed to be desperate to find solution, though they had no idea what to do...
First, Our Lady went to Jesus and informed Him briefly what was the problem. Jesus objected but Mary seemed to dismiss this by going away. Her mission was over. She delivered the problem to the One who knows the solution. She did not instructed Jesus what He should do. It would have been an insult to God Who is Omnipotent and Almighty to teach him what to do... She trusted Her Son completely. She knew He was the Incarnation of God's Mercy and Love and Goodness... She knew He was Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End... She put in front of Him the problem and She left knowing that this is all we, humans, must do in order to ask for help.
Our Lady teaches us in Her relation to Jesus how we should pray in need. It is enough to tell Jesus - 'I have no wine!' That's it! Deal done! The word 'wine' we can substitute with whatever is the nature of our problem, with whatever we need - health, peace, job, this and that.
Then I should stop from teaching God how He should solve my problem, when and in what way... This would have been an insult to my filial relation with God, my beloved Father and a sign of my mistrust in His love and mercy... After telling God what I lack, what I need, I should leave it right there...without adding anything else. I shared with my Father my distress, my problem, my trouble...He heard me. My prayer has been heard. My request has been lodged in my Father's heart, full of concern and care for me...
Our Lady at Kana of Galilee teaches us the other side of the same lesson. Immediately after informing Jesus of the problem, She went back to the servants, telling them to do whatever Jesus would come up with to solve the problem. She gave Jesus total freedom to act according His own wish and wisdom. And She prepared servants to be vigilant and cooperative with any situation they would be faced with, once Jesus acts upon the trouble...
This attitude is contrary to attitudes of many of us. We lodge our request with God and expect He would comply and obey our request exactly as we wanted Him to fulfill it. He focus in one direction, expecting the results and the outcome of our prayer the way we see it, the time we want it and in the manner we wish it to be done.
Such an attitude is the attitude of a person who puts a payment card into ATM slot and punches numbers expecting the amount of money they wanted to come out of the machine. Deal done! No hard feelings...in fact, no feelings at all. Just a mechanical act of an exchange of goods. Input and output. That's it.
But if we want to be Children of God, we should leave the fulfillment of our requests and the solution to our worries to God Himself. He knows best when, how and in what way He should act in order to help us!
This is the lesson which Our Lady taught us at the wedding in Kana of Galilee...
It is up to me to revise my relation to God and my understanding of the nature of genuine prayer of a trusting Child of God...Do I see my God as my loving Father or do I treat Him as an ATM wonder machine to give me instant results the way and in the time I want them to be delivered?
I hope the message got through to my fellow Christians at Madaraka and they stop worry too much and in vain and instead to go to the Father and lodge their worries with Him and come back home with confidence that Father will asnwer them in a manner and in time He deems the best for them. While trusting and waiting, I told them, they should continue to strengthen their trust by saying Divine Mercy chaplet daily as a perpetual novena, reminding themselves of the proper attitude of the Child of God: 'Jesus, I trust in You!'...
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