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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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Anyone who has ever tried to start exercising again after months or years of neglect knows this. The first day you say, “Tomorrow I will start.” Tomorrow comes, and suddenly your body invents fifty reasons why today is not the day. The strange thing is that the longer we stay stuck, the more normal the ‘stuckness’ begins to feel. There is a man lying near the pool in Jerusalem. Thirty-eight years. Just think about that. Some of you here have not been alive that long. Thirty-eight years. That's longer than most marriages. Longer than most careers. Imagine you've been sick for thirty-eight years. Not with a cold. Not with a bad back, not even a fractured hand. And every single day, you drag yourself to a pool and you wait. And wait. And wait some more. Thirty-eight years is long enough for a person’s entire identity to become wrapped around a single sentence: “This is just how my life is.”
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Imagine, for a moment, that you are the royal official in Cana. You aren’t just a character in a story; you are a man whose world is collapsing. Your son is dying. You have likely spent a fortune on the best doctors the Roman world could offer, yet here you are, desperate enough to chase a rumor about a carpenter-turned-healer. The royal official in John’s Gospel was, by any measure, a powerful man. He had rank. He had influence. His name opened doors. Yet none of it could save his son. So he walked. Uphill. In the Galilean heat. From Capernaum to Cana, roughly twenty to twenty-five miles. In our world, that’s a short drive with a good playlist. But in the ancient world, it meant eight or ten hours of dust, heat, and anxious silence.
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“Come back to me, with all your heart; don’t let fear keep us apart…” These lyrics from the hymn Hosea kept echoing in my mind as I reflected on today’s readings from the prophet Hosea and from Mark’s Gospel. Come back to me. To appreciate Hosea’s words, we must remember that he was married to an unfaithful wife—a living symbol of Israel’s spiritual unfaithfulness. Thus, we hear God’s message to His people at the beginning of the reading from Hosea: return to God. Hosea does not focus on Israel’s past failures; instead, he speaks of hope, healing, and restoration. Come back to God and leave behind the false gods and idols that once drew you away. Return to God Hosea tells us how to begin this return. God asks us to set aside our reliance on false gods and instead “take words with you.” In other words, He teaches us how to confess—how to speak honestly to Him, heart to heart. God desires personal relationship, not ritual sacrifices. He invites us to approach Him as we are, not as we think we must be before we dare to come near. God asks for our whole heart and nothing more. He assures us that He will listen to us, love us freely, and not condemn us for the misdeeds of our past. Hosea uses agricultural images to help us understand what it means to return to God. To return is to become rooted in His love, to give off the fragrance of blossoms, and to bear fruit in our lives. When we repent and seek God’s forgiveness, He not only forgives; He restores, beautifies, strengthens, and blesses. God Is Our Refuge In every age, God has been our refuge, though this truth is not always fully understood or embraced. “Let the one who is wise understand.” Hosea reminds us. “Straight are the paths of the Lord.” The Lord asks only two things of us: love your God and love your neighbor as yourself. The just walk this path confidently, while others still stumble. Yet even to those who stumble, God extends the same gentle invitation: come home, come back to Me, and do not let fear keep us apart.
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I know a family that many of us will recognize. The mother is a nurse — she works long shifts, comes home tired, and still lovingly prepares a warm meal every single evening. The father drives for Uber, doing what it takes to keep the family going. The children are grown, employed, and living under the same roof. It is, in so many ways, a story of hard work and quiet sacrifice. And yet something precious has slipped away. Each evening, everyone drifts to the kitchen at their own time, fills a plate, and retreats to their room. The table — set with such love — is never really gathered around. Conversation is scarce. Prayer together is a distant memory. Free time goes to friends or the gym. And late at night, when the house grows still, that mother sits alone and prays — holding her family before God, trusting that her love and her faith are doing something, even when she cannot see it.
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When we hear the word "law," many of us think first of rules and restrictions. We picture something heavy. But this Lenten season, the Church invites us to look again. The law of God was never meant to be a burden. It was given as a path — a way of staying close to God and to one another.
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The two readings today present a moment of seeking immense mercy from the master/God and moments we need to reciprocate the same to other fellow humans. The first reading, in the book of Daniel, is the prayer of Azariah. Azariah who was among the three friends of Daniel, thrown into the fire furnace after refusing to worship the idol god ordered by King Nebuchadnezzar. The name Azariah in Hebrew means God has helped. His name was changed to Abednego after being taken to slavery in Babylon. One significant thing in the prayer of Azariah is that he pleads for God’s mercy on behalf of the whole Israelite Nation.
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