Our prayers must be sincere.

Tuesday, 5/17/16

In the Gospel story certain disciples of Jesus asked God to cure an epileptic boy, but their pleading was ineffective, because, as Jesus pointed out, their requests of God needed to be accompanied with true prayer and fasting.

That tied in with what St. James said in the first reading, “You ask, but you do not receive, because you ask wrongly.”

James asks, “Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God?” He was not speaking against our loving this beautiful world made in God’s image .No, he was speaking about worldly lusts. You cannot be God’s friend, while you court friendship with his enemy.

Our love for God must be sincere. I’m sure you have heard the origin of the word “sincere.” In Roman days when people dotted their rooms with their own household gods, the dealers in those little idols made them by pouring plaster into molds. And when the molds left little holes on the idols, the makers would fill in those holes with wax, then paint over them. Now, the Latin for wax is cera, and the Ltin for “without” is sine; so an idol purported to be without wax was said to be “sincere.”