July 28, 2013 –– Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Gn 18: 20- 32; Ps 138: 1- 3, 6- 8; Col 2: 12-14; Lk 11: 1- 13
“Ask and you shall receive…seek and you shall find…knock and the door will be opened.” Today’s Gospel includes all of these admonitions, and more. The late Archbishop Thomas Murphy, who chaired the Bishops’ committee on stewardship, was apt to say, “Just because you are living out stewardship may not mean the gates of Heaven will fly open for you.”
Thus, from a stewardship viewpoint, it is worth considering what door was Jesus talking about? He was speaking of Himself. He is our door to eternity; He is the gate; He is the gatekeeper. In fact, the Lord refers to Himself as the gatekeeper in John 10:7: “Amen, Amen, I say to you that I am the door of the sheep.”
The point is that stewardship is a way of life to which we are called. However, we are also called to pray — to have a consistent and planned relationship to God. It is not enough to share and to give and to love; we must go beyond that so that, as Paul indicates in today’s second reading, we are one with Christ: “You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God.”
