PRAYER: A COVENANT AGREEMENT. (Homily for January 12, 2016. First Tuesday Ordinary Time, Year C.)


Bible Study:  1 Samuel 1, 9 to 20. And Mark 1, 21 to 28.


Prayer is more than a combination of words proceeding from our lips. Prayer is a whole lifestyle. It is not enough that we talk to God, we must engage him personally with our day to day choices, our thoughts, desires and actions. For our prayers to be effective, words alone are not enough.

Prayer is a relationship, not a conversation. It is one thing to engage a person in a conversation and just talk but it is a different thing altogether to engage a person in a relationship, even when you are not talking with the person, you still connect deeply with him or her. Whether or not that person is around, your life is always affected by that relationship. Being prayerful is more or less like being married, it is living in a covenant agreement with God.

Hannah prayed with so much tears in her eyes for very many years but it wasn’t until she made a vow to God that she saw the result of her prayer. As we read in today’s first reading, Hannah looked up to God and said: “O Lord of Hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant, and remember me, and not forget they maidservant, but will give to your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall touch his head.”

In other words, Hannah wasn’t going to just give God instructions, she too was ready to play her part. Her prayer at this point was going beyond words, she was now ready to engage her very self, ready to give back to God the son she was asking for.

Prayer is not just a matter of talking to God. Prayer demands that we are ready to be in covenant with God, it means we are ready to give God as much as we ask from him. It is an insult that we are asking God for this or that, yet we are not ready even to move the slightest finger to obey even the least of his commands.

If we are people who talk to God, then we must live in covenant relationship with him. There has to be a difference between how we live as prayerful Christians from the rest of the world. Our everyday choices and actions become a fulfilment of our side of the covenant with God.

A vow activates one’s faith. If I am able to do that which I promise to God, then what stops me from believing that God will do for me what I am asking for. It is not as though we are bribing God rather by living in a particular way, we show to God we are in relationship with him, that He is not simply our errand boy but our Lord who deserves total control of everything about us.

Our very lifestyle becomes part of our prayer, our worship. As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, our worship is no longer a matter of this or that mountain, but a matter of spirit and truth. It is from this perspective that we get to understand what Scripture means when it says our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Since we pray with the Temple, we must keep it clean and holy.

When we enter into a life-time covenant relationship with God, there is a certain confidence that comes to us. For instance, when you become a personal friend to the President, there is a degree of boldness you have, you are no longer worried about a lot of things. In the same way, when we begin to do what God demands from us, there is no need for us to be scared of the devil.

Our covenant relationship itself gives us a new identity, an identity that the devil himself respects. A child of God who lives in the light is a terrible threat to the devil and his agents. This is why in our Gospel passage, the possessed man could not withstand Jesus.

Notice that there was no atom of fear on the part of Jesus. He did not only teach with AUTHORITY, he also commanded the devil with AUTHORITY. Authority is a fruit of identity. The kind of authority you exercise is a direct effect of the kind of identity you possess. As we already know, there are certain places we cannot enter without an identity card.

Fear of the devil is a direct consequence of an identity crisis in Christians. We are afraid because we are not sure of who we are, we do not live in covenant with God so we do not know whether or not God will defend us. When we are truly prayerful, the devil does not need any introduction, he trembles before us. Like a Police man whose role is to check people’s ID card, there are certain faces he sees approaching and instantly flings open the door.

Prayer is not a conversation, it is a relationship. It is not something we do in life, it is rather a life we live. Prayer is not just a matter of words, it is a matter of deeds. Prayer is covenant.

Let us Pray:
Lord Jesus, I dedicate my whole life to you. I give to you my thoughts, my words and my actions as my covenant agreement. Amen.


God bless you. Good morning. Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you. Happy new week.

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