Bonding with Christ Through Two-Way Prayer

 

Deacon Dave · Bonding with Christ Through Two-Way Prayer

Homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 21, 2026. Gospel of St. Matthew 10:26-33. Theme: Bonding With Christ Through Two-Prayer 

 In today's Gospel we heard some sayings of Jesus that are pretty easy to understand at face value. Well, maybe the first one about shouting from the housetops needs a little bit of explaining? Back in those days news was spread by literally shouting it from housetop to housetop for all in a village to hear. So, Jesus is saying that His Message is not to be kept secret because it is Good News for everyone. And so He’s telling the disciples to go out and make some noise about the Gospel! Traditionally, we call this spreading of the Gospel “evangelization” (from the Greek word for Gospel which is evangelion) but Pope Francis made it more personal by calling it “missionary discipleship”. With this in mind, we can paraphrase this “housetops message" of Jesus as saying, “Go out as my missionary disciples and spread the good news that I can give anyone a brand new start on life from the inside out!” 

 To be a missionary disciple is a big responsibility given to us by the Lord. It means that he is willing to actually trust us. A missionary simply means “one who officially is sent out” and it doesn’t require that we go to a foreign land, which most of us typically associate with that word. The next word, disciple, means “student” , “learner”, “follower”. Being an attentive disciple is necessary because we cannot give what we do not ourselves possess. So, if we hope to spread knowledge of Jesus and Christianity among others then we have to learn it and live it ourselves! To do so we become lifelong students in the School of Jesus where we learn from His Word and train ourselves to follow His example of loving God and neighbor more than oneself. In this way we become more credible and effective missionary disciples among those with whom we live, work and socialize. The spaces and places of our daily routine become the “missionary field” in which we work. Being a missionary disciple thus gives added meaning and purpose to our lives. 

 But only a truly deep personal bond with Jesus will give us what it takes to be faithful missionary disciples, especially when we face opposition or ridicule. And Jesus warns us about this challenge in today’s Gospel as well. So, it seems to me that if we discern that our relationship with Him isn't at that level of commitment that it should be, then we need to get it there. To do this we only need to look and learn from how we build any significant relationship in our lives. We get to know someone deeply by spending quality time with them, by opening ourselves up to them honestly from the heart. We speak and we listen. Christianity calls this dynamic process of building an intimate relationship with God “prayer”. 

 However, for most of us the word “prayer” doesn’t conjure up an image of friends spending time together. Instead it usually makes us think of speaking, talking, telling, and asking. Too often when we pray we engage in what can be called “One-Way Prayer” which means going on and on with God about this thing or that event in my life. It’s me doing all the talking. But the kind of prayer that begins to form a deep bond with Christ can be called “Two-Way Prayer”. This implies that along with speaking we also listen and allow time for God to have His say. In other words, prayer becomes a person-to-person conversation and not just a monologue.  And so we need to approach prayer in the same way that we would arrange a get-together with any friend. 

First, we need to make the time for it, perhaps even schedule it into our day. We need to arrange a meeting place, which can be anywhere that will allow us to engage in our prayer-conversation with God uninterrupted. We need to do our best to leave distractions behind so as to focus on Who we are with. And it’s important that this prayerful exchange takes place in an atmosphere of silence because the voice of Christ is most clearly heard in the quiet depth of our hearts and in the stillness of our minds. We begin our prayer-time by remembering that we are in the Presence of God who dwells within us by grace through faith. Then in our own words we express our love, adoration and gratitude to God. We ask forgiveness for our failings and invoke the Holy Spirit to help us to pray, for that is His special task for us believers. Then we take up the Bible or some other solid spiritual book and choose a passage. We go over it slowly, thoughtfully. We ponder what the Word might be saying to me, what it might mean for me, right here and right now in my life as it is today. We speak to the Lord and share our thoughts about what comes to mind. We ask Him for insight and remain interiorly quiet with the ears of our hearts open so as to hear whatever God might want to say to us. 

 And that raises an important question: how does God speak to us? It’s kind of difficult to explain but experience shows that He typically communicates through thoughts, words or images that come to mind during prayer and which impress themselves upon us in a distinct way. The more a person grows in the practice of prayer the more they will learn to recognize God’s response. It brings with it a deep sense of inner peace and spiritual joy, even when the message challenges us to do something demanding or difficult. The saints are unanimous in saying that we need to have this kind of a deep prayer-life in order to form a tight bond with God. It will bring us to a spiritual experience of Christ that rests upon the personal conviction that He is not simply a figure in the Bible or a holy man of history but rather. Rather, we will come to see more fully and clearly that He is truly risen and alive and very much interested in my life right here and right now. Such prayer experiences will deepen our bond with Jesus and strengthen us to acknowledge Him publicly before others no matter what might come our way.