(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Mass-Blog-for-the-29th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2025.mp3)
Sometimes parents need to find the right opportunity to teach their kids the importance of gratitude. It’s a key element in any survival strategy, whether in a family or on the job. Persistently bringing your kids with you to church offers one of those opportunities.
For example, through their lessons about persistence, this Sunday’s readings can help you teach your children that gratitude is a muscle that needs exercise—as the heart does. In fact, this muscle is within the heart, but is dormant at birth. As we grow, our family helps us develop this sub-muscle through simple exercises. Brother or sister helps us with a chore we hate, and we say thank you. Mom and Dad give us the latest electronic gizmo we’ve been craving, and we scream with delight.
These selfish successes help us graduate from greed-inspired gratitude to gratitude grown out of our empathy for others needing friends or favors, as we did. Suddenly we start noticing that the things we’re grateful for are becoming more spiritual than tangible.
The more we’re exposed to opportunities to give and receive thanks, the stronger our spirit becomes. This drives maturity, reveals character and further develops our gratitude musculature so we can stand strong before God in prayer.
In this Sunday’s first reading (Exodus 17:8-13), Moses’ brother Aaron and their friend Hur help Moses stand before God in prayer to protect their people from Amalek, Israel’s enemy. While standing atop the mountain overlooking the battle Joshua is waging against Amalek, Moses raises the same staff by which God helped him get water out of a rock, slaking the thirst of his people while they were making their desert exodus. As long as Moses kept that staff raised, Israel dominated Amalek. But Moses needed help because his arms were tiring.
“Aaron and Hur supported his hands,” the account goes, “one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.”
Persistence paid. Moses was so grateful, he built an altar and named it “The Lord is My Banner” (Yahweh-Nissi), an expression not only of worship, but gratitude to God for their victory and security.
In Sunday’s letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:14-4:2), Paul offers another lesson in the persistence of faithful gratitude. Paul is approaching the end of his life and is about to pass the baton of leadership to the disciple he often thanked for his faithful service, and even thanked God for it:
“Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it,” Paul writes, “and that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. … Proclaim the word, be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.”
In Sunday’s gospel from Luke (Luke 18:1-8), we get another lesson in the power of persistence and the gratitude it inspires. Jesus’ parable of the judge who finally renders a just judgment for a widow who’d been begging persistently for justice teaches us to do the same as we stand before God in prayer.
“Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night,” Jesus asks us. “I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Faith is a gift God gives us throughout our trial & error lives. From childhood we gradually learn, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. What makes us stronger makes us more grateful. The more grateful we become, the more joyfully we share our growing faith with others so they may, in turn, get stronger in our persistent battle against our weaknesses.
–Tom Andel
Gratitude is the attitude we should always display. We have so much to be grateful for much of which we very much take for granted. We just plain get used to all the conveniences and privileges we have in our 1st world lifestyles.
Mostly we need to remain devotedly grateful to God for our faith in his Catholic Church and all the ways it helps us become the person Jesus hopes we can be.
Thank you, Lord!
An attitude of prayer leads naturally to an attitude of gratitude. When we realize that our agency comes through God’s grace, not our flawless talent, we can remind ourselves what a blessing life is and why we’re alive.