Overview:

Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

“When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door,
and pray to your Father in secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” (Mt 6:6)

Find today’s readings here. 

I am a verbal processor. At best, it means by talking things out I come to deeper realizations and conclusions about myself, my relationships and the decisions I need to make. At worst, it means I talk and talk and talk myself in circles without making any meaningful progress, sometimes even about problems that only exist in my own head. (I’d like to hereby put my husband and my sister forward for canonization. Their listening skills and patience with me are saintly indeed.)

Because I am a words person, the spoken and written word are both important in my faith life. I’ve been sustained by small group conversation at retreats, by spiritual direction, by reading and writing about the experiences that bring me closer to God. But if this makes any sense, sometimes talking and talking about prayer gets in my way of just…doing it.

Today’s Gospel reading from Matthew is probably familiar to you: We also read it on Ash Wednesday. It can feel ironic that we read a passage about praying, fasting and giving alms in secret when we are spreading a very public sign of our faith across our foreheads.

But to me today, outside the Lenten season and well into the thick of Ordinary Time, this reading highlights the merits of secrecy and, really, of privacy. When no one is watching—or for us chatterboxes, when no one is listening—what really matters? In our private moments, are we motivated to act?

When we keep parts of our spiritual lives private, we create a place where we can be alone with God, where our conscience has a minute to breathe and therefore a chance to speak. Talking it out can be helpful, but in the quest to connect with a divinity that is beyond words, it only goes so far. I sense God’s presence most clearly when I know what the next right thing to do is—and when I allow myself enough private certainty to take the first step.

It’s not Lent, but this reading’s reappearance in the lectionary cycle reminds me that any time can be the time to rededicate ourselves to prayer, to silence, to privacy, to contemplating the hidden nature of our God—and to exploring what that hiddenness can mean in us, too.

Molly Cahill is Associate Director of Digital Strategy at America. She was a 2020-2021 O'Hare Fellow.