Saturday in the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time, November 12, 2022

Luke 18, 1-8

Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. He said, “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’ For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.’” The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? 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?”

The Lord teaches about persistence in prayer through his parable.  He impresses upon us our need to pray consistently and continually.  In this way we deepen our realization of how dependent we are on him for everything.  At the same time, the Lord prepares us for his answer to our prayer, which is always greater than what we asked for.  When he gives it to us, it is what we need, when we need it, and in the best circumstances for us to receive it.  We may be surprised at his largesse or disappointed at his apparent failure to give us what we wanted.  But the answers he gives are not for our momentary enjoyment or satisfaction, but ultimately for our salvation and for that of those we love.  

We may pray to God for a very long time for something, the urgent need of which is apparent to us, the answer for which we must wait.  We may think about this, wonder about it, brood over it, question the reasons for the delay.  We should also think about how God “prays” to us, as it were, nudging us to perform some work great or small, or to cease some habitual sin.  A priest friend of mine and I were talking the other day about how God worked on us to get us into the seminary, years ago.  In both of our cases God persistently worked on us until we realized that stalling amounted to fighting him, and we gave up.  We both gave up good lives and careers, but because of God’s not letting up on us, we never looked back and never doubted our vocations in spite of certain hardships and disappointments.  My experience was that of a whisper in my heart that grew over time to the ferocity of an amplified orchestra.  He works on all of us like that, never giving up.  We make ourselves miserable by trying to avoid his call, in stalling to do the work he wants.  We may have so filled our lives with the noise of the world that we do not realize who it is that is calling, but it’s steady tattoo on our heart goes on and on.  This is true when he “prays” to us to give up some sin or bad habit.  We can see this in the case of Judas in the Gospels.  The Lord warned him several times during the Last Supper that he knew he was going to be betrayed and he showed Judas very clearly that he knew it was him.  He even told him so.  Even in the Garden of Gethsemane the Lord Jesus urged Judas to turn away from what he was doing, asking him, “Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”  Judas could have brought himself back to his senses at that point and led the guards away, or he could have defended Jesus, or, at the very least, he could have begged for forgiveness.

Our Lord wants only our happiness.  His love gushes down on us and we do not feel it because we try to evade it or even pretend that it is not happening.  We do this because we are more attracted to the promised pleasures of things we can see and somewhat control than to the God we cannot.  Through lives of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving we open ourselves up to knowing his love and to following the calls that he makes to us, which lead to our permanent happiness and the salvation of souls.