WITH HANDS RAISED

16th October, 2016: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Exo 17: 8-13; 2 Tim 3: 14-4:2; Lk 18:1-8

Work as if everything depended on you; Pray as if nothing depended on you, goes the popular saying. Today we have a wonderful image to place before us, as we go about our daily life. Moses on the hill overlooking the battle, with hands raised unto the Lord! The Battle belongs to the Lord... all that we need to do is keep still, the Lord will fight for us says the book of Exodus (14:14). 

We are called to live our life with our hands raised unto the Lord! 

Living with hands raised unto the Lord is a gesture that means to abandon everything into the hands of God. It is a total personal abandonment to the Lord, that the Lord may guide us and that the Lord may fight the battle for us! Many grow weary of struggles and temptations in life... when Moses' hands were raised, Israel won! The book of Proverbs tells us, 'the horse is made ready for the battle; but the victory belongs to the Lord!'(Prov. 21:31). When we learn to abandon ourselves in the hands of God, we will see the wonders that can happen.

Living with hands raised unto the Lord is to reach out to the Lord with all our heart. It is like the antenna that stretches to connect, to receive and to communicate. That is in short, 'prayer' - to connect, to receive and to communicate. Let us pay attention to the term that seems common in today's readings: pray without ceasing tells Jesus presenting to us the image of the widow; proclaim in season and out of season instructs St. Paul; and the first reading presents to us Moses unwilling to grow weary of having his hands raised unto the Lord. A two fold call here: first, not to grow weary... like the widow to go on in trust, with our hands raised unto the Lord; second, when a brother or sister seems to grow weary, to rush to their side like Aaron and Hur and to be with them and to raise our hands in unison unto the Lord. A praying person builds a praying community of brothers and sisters, genuinely concerned about each other!

Living with the hands raised unto the Lord is to be filled with hope in the Lord. Like it happened to the widow, it may look like you might never get justice. Like it happened to the Israelites, it might look like you are losing the battle. Things may continuously go wrong, people might endlessly misunderstand you, nothing might seem to be going the way you wished it would..."But as for you, continue, in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it"...from Jesus himself who hoped in the One who sent him, from our Blessed mother who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord! "Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of our hope" reminds Pope Francis.

Every day of our life, every moment of our day, let us resolve to live with our hands raised unto the Lord in a holy abandonment, in a loving union and in an unfailing hope... so that when Our Lord and Saviour comes he will still find faith here amidst us!