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Bishop's Homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

October 19, 2025

(HoneySkies / Shutterstock.com)

Homily of the Most Reverend Larry Silva, Bishop of Honolulu
[Cathedral of Orvieto, Italy]

Yesterday I was watching a young woman trying to cross a busy boulevard in Rome. She held her hand up to stop traffic, but all the drivers ignored her.  At first I thought she may have been hailing a taxi, but, no.  Meanwhile, while she was focused on stopping traffic, other people were just stepping into the crosswalk and stopping traffic simply by crossing in front of it.  Like prayer, you have to put yourself on the line.  You have to have some skin in the game.  It is a relationship with God that is most important, and confidence in his love and his desire to give us what is best – in his own time and in his own way.

I recall some years ago a friend of mine, who was a very devout Catholic, stopped going to Mass for a while.  I thought this was very uncharacteristic for him, so I asked him what was going on.  He told me that he brother had recently died in a tragic accident, and he was very upset that God took him, so he decided he would not go to Mass.  I asked him if he had ever told God how upset he was about his brother’s death, honestly expressing his feelings, no holds barred. He said he never thought about talking to God in that way, but I urged him to do so.  He had an honest rant with God, holding nothing back about his feelings of anger at God that he would allow the death of his brother.  He said it was the most healing prayer he had ever had, and he started going back to Mass again.

Our Scriptures today are about this kind of persistent, insistent prayer.  God wants us to have some skin in the game, to invest ourselves in what we ask for, and even to make pests of ourselves, as the widow did toward the unjust judge. After all, God is not someone to whom we can snap our fingers and order around so that our will may be done. He is someone who loves us more than we can imagine, but who wants us to trust in him, even when we do not at first receive what we request.

I think of the story of the Wedding Feast of Cana and Mary’s pleading to Jesus.  Sometimes we romanticize this story, but I think of it as your stereotypical Jewish mother pleading with her son. She tells Jesus about the embarrassing situation that is about to come upon the host family, “They have no more wine.” Jesus almost rebuffs her by saying, “Woman, how does this concern of yours involve me? My hour has not yet come.” I imagine Mary then saying, “Oh! So that’s the way it’s going to be!”  She storms off, rounds up all the servants, stands them before Jesus, and looks at them, saying, “Now, do whatever he tells you.”  I imagine that before she disappeared back into the crowd, she gave Jesus as motherly look that said, “Now, you tell them it’s not yet your hour!”  Then the miracle was done.  Mary is always our best intercessor, because she knows that prayer involves hope, even when we first think that the answer is “No” and the situation is hopeless.

We pray for peace in the world, and we have been doing so for centuries.  It has not happened yet, but we should never stop raising up our hands to show our confidence in God’s power to bring about what seems to elusive to us. We pray for a respect for all life, yet we see that respect eroding with increasing abortions, assisted suicides, and euthanasia.  Yet, with the help of our friends, we keep lifting up our hands in prayer so that life may prevail in the end. We pray for harmony and unity in a country, a world, even a Church, that is divided by so much discord.  We can easily throw up our hands in despair, but the Lord reminds us to hold up our hands in hope. Even though we may feel the fatigue of working for these things we desire, God, who is the most just judge of all, will grant all that we need.

Raising our hand alone can be easily ignored, but when we put our whole selves into prayer, God does hear us.  He enjoys struggling with us.  In fact, the name “Israel” means, “one who wrestles with God.” We do not let him go until he blesses us, and this is what delights God, because it brings us closer to him.