30th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
October 23, 2022

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

Today is also World Mission Sunday, and for many years now, this is a day that the universal Church sets aside for all of us to reflect on our responsibility for the Church’s mission of evangelization.

As we know Jesus Christ entrusted to his apostles with the great task of proclaiming his love and his promise of salvation to the ends of the earth.

And each of us who is baptized is called to answer Jesus’ call, and to play our part in his great mission of salvation, his beautiful plan of love for the nations and for every soul.

So, as we pray today, let us remember missionaries around the world, who have left everything behind to answer Our Lord’s call. Let us ask for the grace to find new ways to bring the love of Jesus Christ to the people in our lives and in our world today.

It is also, as we know, collection for World Mission Sunday. And actually I was in Rome just a few days ago and we were encouraged to be generous cause the needs of the people in the missions. So I hope that we all continue to be very generous for the missions all over the world.

Then turning to our readings, we are called to reflect this Sunday on the power of prayer, as I was saying before, especially I would think the prayer of petition, and the prayer for forgiveness, which we hear in our passage of the Gospel.

Prayer, as we know, is the foundation of our friendship with God.

If we want to know God, then we have to make time for our relationship with him. So we have to pray every day, just like Jesus did. Jesus gives us that example all through the Gospels. He is always going off to be alone, to pray.

And we should pray like Jesus taught us — especially with great humility. And that’s the point of his parable in the Gospel today about the Pharisee and the tax collector.

The way Jesus describes the Pharisee’s prayer shows us that pride is always a temptation. As we heard, the Pharisee is not really praying. He’s telling God how good he is.

But Jesus is describing the prayer of the Pharisee for a reason. I think he’s telling us about it because we all have the tendencies of the Pharisee inside us.

Pride is always our temptation. We all know that we can be a little like that Pharisee. Thinking we’re better than other people.

But God wants us to be honest in our relationship with him. We have to remember that everything we have comes from God. And we don’t earn any of it. All the gift of his divine love.

And that is the other example that Jesus gives us in his parable today, the prayer of the tax collector.

As we heard, the tax collector talks to God from the heart. He doesn’t say anything about his own merits or accomplishments. He just tells God actually what God already knows: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

This is such beautiful prayer, it is absolute honesty. My brothers and sisters, this should be the prayer of every man and woman.

Jesus is telling us today — that this is the attitude that we need when we pray. This is the attitude we need for our lives. We need to come to God — just as we are. In humility.

So when we pray, let us just talk to God in simple words, honest words. Just asking him for mercy, for help. Asking to know God’s will and what path we should take. We need to come to God always, kind of with “empty hands,” with our hearts open to receive what God wants to offer us.

Because as we heard and as we know, God hears the prayer of the humble. That’s also the message we heard also in our first reading today: “The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds … His petition reaches the heavens.”

So I encourage all of you, my dear brothers and sisters — to make time for prayer in your daily life. Make prayer a priority. Every day. It doesn’t need to be a long time. Just a few minutes. Don’t let anything get in the way of meeting Jesus every day. That’s the most important appointment that we have every day of our lives.

And when you pray: Just talk to God from the heart, just like the tax collector. And of course, we can talk to God about everything — our work, our projects, our fears, our hopes. Whatever it is in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives.

Through our prayer, God will give us strength. Just like we heard in the second reading of today’s Mass about St. Paul how God strengthened him. God will strengthen each one of us.

Finally, prayer is never just our private conversation with God. When we humble ourselves to pray, we hear God’s voice. And when hear his voice, he is always calling us to use the gifts he gives us to serve others in need, especially the poor, the lonely, the weak and the vulnerable.

God wants us to be the answer to someone else’s prayer. So, my brothers and sisters, let us ask for that grace today.

Today let us also keep praying for missionaries on this World Mission Sunday, and let us keep praying that we can be missionary disciples in our daily lives.

And let us ask our Blessed Mother Mary to help us to pray more like that tax collector. With confidence that God is always present in our lives. That he sees us and hears us. And that he will answer all our prayers.