17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This is the story about the burning hut.  The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forth coming. Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect himself from the elements, and to store his few possessions. But then one day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut was in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky! The worst had happened; everything was lost! He was stunned with grief and anger. "God, how could You do this to me?" he cried. Early the next day, however, he was awakened by the sound of a ship that was approaching the island. It had come to rescue him. "How did you know I was here?" asked the weary man of his rescuers. "We saw your smoke signal," they replied. My dear friends, it seems at times that God is unfair in answering our prayers. We can hear from others that their prayer-requests are often answered while for some of us, we hardly get what we have prayed for. There are Catholics who transfer to other religion because they thought our God is sleeping or hiding from them that nothing is happening with their prayers. There are also those people bartering or begging before God just to have what they are asking from him. They pray for the recovery of their health, they pray to win in a case against those who implicate them despite their innocence, they ask for justice, etc. They have a justifiable cause or even the noblest intention in requesting God for his positive response. They even think that because they are good people, so they deserve the positive answer of God. They go to mass and pray for their personal intentions expecting that God will never fail them. Yet in the long run they never get what they believe they truly deserve from God. Why? What is the reason for this? In like manner, we also ask: Are all the prayers of a parish priest answered by God because as a priest he is a chosen man of God? Obviously, not all the prayers of the priest are granted by God! Then why or why not? For a philosopher, he can philosophize about it. He can tell us that there are two kinds of responses -positive and negative. If God does not grant you your request, then he has given you a negative answer. If we ask why in a negative, then the philosopher will tell us that the reason depends on God. Though this is a good answer, it can lead one to think that our God is sometimes indifferent to those who are unjustly suffering. Thanks to Jesus! In Luke 11:1-13, Jesus revealed to us that God listens to all our prayers. But Jesus also wanted us to understand that when God answers our prayers, he does it according to how he sees our soul needs it. Whether we receive the particular thing we ask from him or not, we have to understand that God grants us what is good for our soul. Besides, Jesus did not say God will grant us all we ask of him. He rather said, "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" This means whether we receive  what we ask from God or not, he gives the Holy Spirit to make us realize later, if not now, the reason why or why not. What we only need to believe when we pray is that God knows best. He answers our prayer not according to our plan but according to our divine purpose here on earth. Though how hard it is for us to accept that not all particular things we ask from him   will be given to us; we have to find comfort in realizing that God knows what is best for us and such thing he will give us in due time. Amen.