Be Careful What You Pray For

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

In today's reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, the people of Israel ask God to send them a prophet, someone like Moses, to deliver God's word. Their experience of God at Horeb had been frightening. The usual attendant natural phenomena – lightening, fire, wind, and earthquake – had for all intents and purposes scared them out of their wits. They would prefer, they told God through Moses, if they could receive God's word less directly. God answered their prayer. From that time forward, God would speak to them through the prophets.

Unfortunately, the Israelites had a nasty habit of ignoring the prophets in their midst. If they became too bothersome, they simply killed them. The prophets had the irritating tendency to hold a mirror up before the people so that they could see themselves, so that they could not ignore the blemishes, the guilt that was written all over their faces. Instead of removing the cause of the guilt, they simply broke the mirrors so they would not have to gaze at the image in them.

In the Gospel today, Jesus casts out an evil spirit which invades the synagogue in which they have gathered. In so doing, Jesus stirs up amazement in the people of his adopted hometown of Capernaum. As we Westerners read this incident, our attention focuses on the evil spirit and the man it seems to have possessed. However, the people of Jesus' time are not amazed at the presence of the evil spirit. Rather, they are amazed at Jesus, a carpenter's son, who has authority over the spirits and teaches forthrightly without quoting the rabbis and scholars of the past. In their way of thinking, carpenter's sons don't act this way. It seems that, once again, God has once again answered their prayer and sent a prophet among them. Just as in the case of all the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, when Jesus becomes a bother, they conspire to eliminate him.

The message is fairly clear here. Be careful what you ask for; you might just get it. Once God answers your prayer, you won't have an excuse to ignore God's providential care. You, like the Israelites of old, will be beholden to God and to the love God has showered upon you.