Week 8 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Peter 4.7-13; Psalm 96; Mark 11.11-26

'Stay sane and sober for your prayers' is another translation of a sentence in today's first reading. Sanity and sobriety are obviously good things to enjoy, a good preparation for prayer. Sometimes, however, they are the very things for which we need to pray rather than the condition in which we find ourselves praying.

Rather than entering further into that question, the reading encourages us not to focus on ourselves but to look outside, to our neighbour, and our neighbour's need. 'Above all' love one another sincerely, it says. Charity is the supreme law of Christian life. This was so from the very beginning, from Jesus himself and the new commandment which he gave to his disciples, to love one another as he has loved them (us). Use whatever gifts God has given you in serving one another.

To curse a tree for not bearing fruit when it is not the season for fruit might seem like the action of a person who is neither sane nor sober. What can it be except a prophetic action calling us to bear fruit at all times, 'in season and out of season' as Saint Paul will later put it.

The theme of prayer returns. This is firstly in the cleansing of the Temple where prayer has been pushed out by commercial activity. And it is secondly in a general encouragement from Jesus to pray with faith. Whatever you ask foir in prayer will be given you. Once again there is then an immediate 'turn to the neighbour' who we must forgive if we are to appreciate the forgiveness we seek from God.

That is a recipe for the sanity and sobriety that we seek and which will come in response to our prayer even if it is not there as we begin to pray.