Now here is a parable that I can easily restate in a contemporary setting. In a certain city there was a corrupt bureaucrat who neither feared God nor respected people. A single mother on welfare kept coming to him and saying, “Make my landlord fix the furnace and insulate my house. I can’t afford to pay the heat bill and my children are freezing.” For awhile the bureaucrat refused to listen but the mother came to his office every day with her three children and each day she would voice the same plea. After several weeks of this, the bureaucrat decided that if he didn’t give her what is right, she would continue to pester him so he finally issued the order to her landlord to repair the house. The furnace was replaced and her home was insulated.
The next day the mother was back in the bureaucrat’s office with her children. She thanked him for what he had done and then said, “Now let me tell you about my plumbing problems.”
One point Jesus is making with this parable is that we are to pray always without growing weary. If persistence can change the mindset of a self-centered judge, how much more will our persistence prevail with a gracious God who loves us?
The ultimate question, however, is not “How will God react?” but “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” That is, when Jesus returns in his glory, will he find us in prayer? In whatever trying situation you find yourself in, how do you react? Unlike the widow, some people give up. Worn out by their struggle, they retreat in defeat. Would you do the same thing if you were in their shoes?
Some people don’t give up though. They persist, like the widow in the parable, seeking to be vindicated, to succeed and ultimately rebuild their lives. You have to wonder what gives them such inner strength. The message in these readings provides a clue: persistence and prayer go hand in hand.
The noted Jewish rabbi, Abraham Heschel describes persistence as a form of prayer, flowing from the power of faith that initiates and acts. Persistence is prayer that is rooted in our ability to approach God and reveal our hurts, hopes, dreams, and desperations.
Persistence enabled the widow to get the justice she deserved.
Persistence enables my cousin, Betty, to celebrate 46 years of marriage. She was only 14 when she married Lou and back then no one expected their marriage to last, especially since Lou had a drinking problem, but with persistence, they have licked the problems they have encountered, including his alcoholism, her struggle with lupus and bankruptcy.
As the parable points out, persistence is not merely waiting for something to happen, but actively doing something that brings us closer to our aspirations. By itself, prayer may or may not accomplish what we have in mind, but when prayer takes on the quality of being persistent, then we are allowing not so much our will but God’s will to be done. In other words, persistent prayers are answered but not always in the manner we would expect.
Prayers go unanswered only when we cease to pray, for then we deny God the chance to even respond.
Some people become disillusioned with prayer because they don’t get what they want. People who pray for miracles usually don’t get miracles, but people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have instead of what they have lost, very often find that prayer helped them to tap hidden reserves of faith and courage which were not available to them before.
Another point that I hear Jesus is making comes to light if we think of the widow, rather than the judge, as God. This allows us to see God as the one who is persistently seeking justice and calling on us to do the same. Anyone who resists injustice, faces it, names it, and denounces it, as the widow did, is God-like and is doing what needs to be done to build up the kingdom of God in our midst. The persistence of the widow reminds me of others who have sought justice in our times: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, jr., Rosa Parks, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Oscar Romero, Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta to name but a few. Need I mention that prayer is the one tool that enabled them to persist in their mission?
Oftentimes we find ourselves struggling with issues that demand a choice. Do we listen to God through the different ways God uses to communicate with us as we discern how to respond? One way to discern is the sacred scriptures which, as Paul notes, “are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.” Another is the Magisterium, that is, the teachings of our Church conveyed to us by her bishops. For example, in the bulletin this week, you will find a flyer, entitled Seeking the Common Good, which discusses the initiatives on the ballot for this fall in light of Catholic social teaching and tradition. The bishops, I must add, did not endorse any of the initiatives nor are they indicating how we should vote. Their aim is to help us to act justly when we cast our votes.
The widow in the parable was certainly formidable. Was she the only one to take on the judge, the only one to hunger and thirst for justice? She shouldn’t be. She should have us for company and that, my friends, is what this gospel is really all about.