I talked last week about my time in Rome as a seminarian.  This week I’d like to talk about being back in Rome as a priest 1.5 years ago for a mission trip with college students

 

In a corner of the Vatican, St. John Paul II gave Mother Teresa a house and a building to help take care of the poor in Rome

 

Myself and our college students, then, would show up every morning to work and help out alongside the sisters.  They ran a home for women who were suffering from debilitating mental disabilities and required serious care.

 

And here’s the thing – the sisters were not very efficient.    I don’t mean that they were lounging around by any means, but it just wasn’t efficient.  They were cutting up vegetables and cooking in the kitchen and although we were there to work, there wasn’t anything super pressing that they needed done, so they had us do a deep clean of a kitchen upstairs.  They had none of the desperate overworked urgency that I see when I visit hospitals or nursing homes

 

And we stopped at 11 because the sisters ate lunch and then they prayed for about two hours.  And this was the practice of all of the Sisters of Charity around the world and it was the practice of Mother Teresa as well – morning work, lunch and prayers for several hours in the afternoon and then maybe a bit more work before the evening.   I’m not saying Mother Teresa and her sisters had it easy at ALL, I’m just saying it wasn’t efficient.

 

As Americans we often think that way – how can we make our charity more efficient – how many people can we move through our food pantry, how many sick people can we care for, how can we maximize our outreach – all good questions, but we can go too far

 

 

We heard in last week’s Gospel Jesus inviting his Apostles to come away with him for a while.  We again see them retreating this week, and again the people follow and need immediate assistance

 

Like the sisters in Rome the pattern of Christ seems to be consistent – work – retreat to silence – work – retreat to silence

 

 

So when Jesus tests Philip by asking “where can we get enough food for everyone” Jesus isn’t testing the Apostles just for fun

Jesus isn’t testing them to highlight his awesomeness – he’s not saying “wow – there’s a lot of people here…who could possibly feed them…wouldn’t I be awesome if I could do it…”

 

Jesus is wanting them to recognize that He is in the midst of our work.  We’re always tempted to think we have to do it all but Christ is wanting us to see that if we withdraw daily, if we go away to pray, then our work prospers

 

We might be a mother with children, and we ask “How could all of this get done? I certainly can’t pray”

We might look around at the poor of Clay County and ask “How could our St. Vincent DePaul Society feed everyone?”

We might look around at the children who need taught and ask “How can we accomplish all of this?”

You might be a person who works to try to sustain your family and you see all that needs done and you might ask “How could I possibly get all of this work done?  I have 20 days of work to do this week, I certainly can’t take time to pray”

 

Jesus points out how large the task is – look at all these people – not so that when they are fed the Apostles will be impressed, Jesus does this so that they’ll learn the lesson for when he’s gone, and so that we will learn the lesson – work hard, work as hard as you possibly can, but give an hour to God each day for prayer and Scripture and the other stuff will get done. 

 

The bread in the story today wasn’t exploding and multiplying in their hands, no one saw the food appearing, it just says when they were done everyone was fed and there were leftovers.

 

So to for us in our lives – work, work, work, and then give God an hour each day

 

At each parish we are having adoration for 12 hours starting in September – Greencastle every Thursday and Annunciation every Tuesday.

 

The power of adoring Christ in the monstrance on the altar has been a source of miracles and conversion for thousands of years.  Of course stopping in to pray in a Church you are also in the presence of Christ in the Tabernacle as well.  St. Paul’s is open all day, and Annunciation looks to soon be open again all day as well as soon as the camera system gets worked out this week it looks like

 

St. Alphonsus Liguori said this: “Know also that you will probably gain more by praying fifteen minutes before the Blessed  Sacrament than by all the other spiritual exercises of the day. True, Our Lord hears our prayers anywhere, for He has made the promise, 'Ask, and you shall receive,' but He has revealed to His servants that those who visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament will obtain a more abundant measure of grace.”

 

 

Consider signing up and committing to an hour a week.  Whatever else you have to get done will get done.  As one saint said: If you’re too busy to pray, you’re too busy