September 9, 2025; Tuesday, week 23
HOMILY
“If you want to pray, Jesus said to his disciples, enter your cell, shut the door and pray your father in secret”.
Jesus himself often did something very similar. He often went to the mountain, specially during the night, to pray his Father in secret. And if you examine all the instances in the Gospel when he does that, you will see that it is almost always before making an important decision. We have an example in today's Gospel. Before choosing his twelve apostles, Jesus spends a whole night of prayer on the mountain.
This reminds us that whenever we have to make an important decision, we must pray. There is a need for reflection, certainly, as there is a place for dialogue and consultation. But before everything else -- and more than everything else, there is a need for prayer. We must pray not so much in order to get some extraordinary, miraculous light; but simply in order to have the right dispositions that will allow us to make the right decision. God has given us the full responsibility to make our own decisions. So, we should not ask God to tell us what to decide. We should rather ask Him to give us he right disposition so that we will make decisions that are conformed to his own Will.
At dawn Jesus calls all his disciples, those who were already following him. He called them to the mountain and, there he chose the Twelve. They are chosen by name. Any vocation is something absolutely personal. God does not call people by groups or categories. He does not place a notice in the newspapers calling all those who are interested. He always invites each one of us by her or his name. When we were born, when we received baptism, when we entered the monastery, we received such a personal call and we answered it, establishing a life- long personal relationship.
And, last, at the end of the Gospel we see several concentric circles around Jesus. There is the circle of the disciples whom he called to the mountain at dawn and from whom he chose the Twelve. Then, when he came down from the mountain, he found a larger group of disciples, and, with them, a great crowd of people from everywhere, who had come to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. Everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because a power came out of him that cured them all.
We can certainly find our place in one of these circles or in the crowd, and therefore, we too have come this morning to hear Jesus and to touch him in this Eucharist. Let us also ask him to cure us from all our ailments of body, spirit and heart, so that we may always decide and act according to his will and the will of his Father.
Armand Veilleux