29th
Ordinary Sunday (Year C)
First
Reading: Exodus
17:8-13 Second Reading:
2 Timothy 3:14-4:2 Gospel
Reading: Luke
18:1-8
PERSISTENCE IN
OUR PRAYER AND IN OUR LIVING FAITH
An
elderly lady was once asked by a young man who had grown weary in the
fight, whether he ought to give up the struggle. "I
am beaten every time," he
said dolefully. "I feel I
must give up."
"Did
you ever notice," she
replied, smiling into the troubled face before her, "that
when the Lord told the discouraged fishermen to cast their nets
again, it was right in the same old spot where they had been fishing
all night and had caught nothing?" Jesus
tested the persistence of his disciples. They obeyed him and the
result was astounding – they caught 153 large fishes, so much, that
their nets almost tore.
Today
is the 29th
Sunday in Ordinary Time and the dominant theme that pervades in all
three of today’s Scripture Readings is persistence
in our prayer and in our living faith.
Prayer is efficacious - in fact the most effective activity - and
therefore, prayer that is constant and persisting is a guarantee of
success. The First Reading from the Book of Exodus and from the
Gospel from St. Luke confirm this truth by showing Israel´s victory
occurring when Moses had his hands raised in prayer and through
Jesus´ story of the insistent widow and the unjust judge. In the
Second Reading from his Second Letter to Timothy, St Paul exhorts us
to persevere in the faith we have received and transmit it
faithfully, fulfilling our Christian vocation whether easy or
difficult.
MOSES'
HANDS RAISED IN PRAYER FOR VICTORY:
In
the First Reading of today, the author of Exodus narrates a strange
and surprising war story. After their deliverance from the slavery of
Egypt, God ordered Moses to lead His people to the Promise Land.
During their long march from Egypt to Palestine the Israelites had to
go through land controlled by other people. Some of these resisted
this invasion. The Israelites had to fight to gain passage. Exodus
17:8–13 tells us of the first of such battles. They are attacked by
desert tribes called Amalekites. Moses sent Joshua to do battle while
he himself, accompanied by Aaron and Hur, stood on the top of the
hill with the staff of God in his hand. There he stood in the
traditional stance of prayer, arms raised and palms opened. As long
as he kept his hands raised, Israel was winning. But when he lowered
his hands for rest, Israel began to lose. After a while, Moses was
tired of keeping his hands up in the air. So Aaron and Hur put a
stone under Moses so he could sit on it. Then they went on each of
his sides, each one holding one of Moses’ hands up until the sun
set. Finally, the Israelites won and put their enemies to the sword.
What made the Israelites win the battle? Moses at prayer. He did not
only pray, he persevered in his prayer - throughout the battle.
Healthy intercessory
prayer is really prayer for divine justice; i.e. God’s
Will. Moses’ arms were extended in prayer in his plea for a just
victory over pagan Gentiles who opposed the freedom pilgrimage of
God’s Chosen people. His extended arms were not magical gestures,
but a posture of prayerful request.
PAUL
URGES TIMOTHY TO BE PERSISTENT IN LIVING FAITH:
In
the Second Reading of today, the text from 2nd
Timothy is a continuation of pastoral advice from Paul,
the Apostle, to Timothy the local Church leader. In essence, St. Paul
is exhorting a youthful Timothy to be persistent, to stand fast, and
to remain faithful to the Tradition he had received. St. Paul is
encouraging him to proclaim the word as the principal activity by
which to be faithful to the Gospel message.
Paul urges Timothy
to continue in what he had learned and firmly believed, knowing from
whom he had learned it and how from his childhood he had known the
sacred writings that are able to instruct for salvation through faith
in Christ Jesus. Even though Timothy had learned from his Jewish
tradition particularly his parents much about the faith, it was from
Paul that Timothy had learned about Jesus Christ. Now Paul solemnly
charges Timothy to announce the word of God in all circumstances and
to proclaim the message of Jesus, by challenging and encouraging
people. He asks Timothy to be persistent in this work whether the
time is favorable or unfavorable, with the utmost patience in
teaching. In
other words, the Word of God is always in season. Christians must
persevere in their baptismal promise to reprove, entreat, and rebuke
in all patience and doctrine, be it in the winter or in the summer,
be it at home or at work, be it with family or with friends. Called
to be God's children, the Lord has chosen to manifest His glory
through us. If we remain idle, when the Lord returns, He will not
know us. If we persist in our living faith, when He returns, He will
welcome us to His eternal Kingdom.
THE
PERSISTENT WIDOW AND THE UNJUST JUDGE:
In
the Gospel Reading of today, the evangelist Luke explains that the
parable of the unscrupulous judge and the importunate widow, which
Jesus addressed to his disciples, is about “the
necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.”
The widow has been wronged and she is looking for justice. We
are not told what actually her case involved against her adversary.
Anyway, she takes her case to a
judge to get it, but the corrupt and unjust judge ignores her plea.
In those days, a widow was the personification of powerlessness and
she hardly had any chance to get justice. She had only God as her
protector and care taker. However, she relentlessly pursues
him and goes on pleading and nagging until he
could no longer tolerate her presence, until finally, he
accepts to intervene and decides the case in her
favor. He helps the widow not because he is good but because she is
persistent. Jesus
concludes that if a corrupt judge can do justice to someone who keeps
on asking, God, the most just judge of all, will certainly listen to
those who persist in prayer. That is to say that if we are
persistent, we can wear down even
God.
Obviously, the
parable is a lesson in persistence in prayer. But there is a problem
also with this interpretation of the story. It is difficult and
theologically incorrect for us to see anything of God in the judge
himself. For, while the parable seems to present prayer as nagging
God for what we want, such a reading misses the point. God is not
like the judge in the parable, worn down by requests and coerced to
respond. The judge in the the parable is corrupt and unjust. Since
God can be neither, we must understand Jesus to be saying that if
even an unjust judge responds to the persistence of the widow, how
much more so will God listen to our prayers. God truly wants to hear
our needs and respond generously. It is the final lament of Jesus
that gets to the point of the parable. The lesson is about the
persistence of the one who prays. God wants us to be like the
persistent widow, staying in relationship with God, confident that
God hears and answers prayers.
But
there can be another way of reading the parable and interpret it.
When we read this parable about perseverance, we usually think of it
in these terms: God is the judge and we are the widow. This means we
should persevere in pestering God until we are given what we want.
But what happens if we turn that around and say that we are the judge
and God is the widow? In some ways, this interpretation makes more
sense. We, like the judge, are basically unjust. Sometimes we, too,
have no fear of God; that is, we do not allow God to scare us into
being good. Similarly, like the judge we persist in refusing to
listen to the cries of the poor all around us. But
God is the persistent widow who will not go away, an interesting turn
on the story. God keeps badgering us, refusing to accept as final our
no to love. God will persist until we render a just judgment, that
is, until we let the goodness out, until we learn to love. Moreover,
when one sees the widow as God-like, the meaning of the parable is
that when one fights injustice, and keeps fighting it, and fights it
until justice is achieved, then one is like God. Jesus own fight
against injustice, even to his death and resurrection, is the model
of a God-like fight to end the world of injustice and create the
kingdom of God. An interesting turn on the widow’s story! We are
like Jesus, like God, when we fight injustice without ceasing,
nagging and fighting till justice is achieved. It may seem that
people don’t listen to us, but if we keep it up, don’t relent,
justice may come by the sheer force of our
persistence.
Finally, Jesus concludes
the parable by asking, "And
yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
It is interesting that it is after he speaks of the persistent widow
that Christ then moves on to speak of the coming of the Son of Man,
the great event of the end times, the establishment of an everlasting
kingdom where the rule of God orders all things. In
a world that is full of the frenzy of activity, it seems impractical
and useless to take time to pray. What does it accomplish, after all?
The
truth is that there is little faith in the power of prayer to bring
about real, palpable results. In the end, it all depends upon what
results we are seeking. If we are only trying to have success in
temporal affairs – money, promotions, vacations and the like –
then it is much more practical to just ambitiously seek our goals
without regard for prayer. Therefore,
to obtain our salvation, we must persevere in our living faith, in
our adoration of God, in our love towards others, in our
righteousness, in our obedience to God, in our servitude, in our
humility, all of these being the food that feeds our souls to assure
our salvation through Jesus Christ.
CONCLUSION:
In
today's Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples about the need to pray
continually without losing heart. The parable is meant to show the
importance of perseverance, even when God seems to delay in coming to
their aid. Just as prayer requires faith, it also requires
perseverance. Persevering prayer is a way of keeping alive what we
hope for. It means to cling to God specially when we are in darkness.
When Jesus tells us to pray always and never to lose heart - to
persevere in prayer - He wants us to trust in His Father who always
listens to us and who will never abandon us. He wants us never to
doubt that our prayers - though not answered immediately - are heard
for His Spirit is always with us.
Now,
many of us may say that we have tried prayer and have given up on it
after a while. Why? Because we didn't get what we prayed for. Why?
Because in these days of instant coffee and instant results, we may
have the mistaken notion that prayer works automatically, that when
we pray for something, God will grant it and immediately. But God is
not like that. He always answers our prayers but in His own way and
in His own time. God knows our hearts and our thoughts. He knows our
wants and needs. So why does he so often seem to delay in helping us?
Perhaps the difficulty here is that, while he knows our needs and
hears our prayers, it is often the case that we don't know our own
needs. Very often we need time to have the requests and desires of
our hearts clarified for ourselves, and very often this can only
happen over a period of time.
Moreover, the loving and
compassionate God does justice for the poor and the oppressed. He
wants us also always to be concerned with justice for the rich and
the poor. After all, God cares for all peoples equally. For aren't
we all His children and therefore embraced by
His providence?
So today, as we continue
with
the celebration of the Holy Mass, let us ask God to bless us with all
the perseverance that we need to live our faith in Christ. Some of us
may need perseverance in our baptismal promise to preach the Gospel.
Others may need perseverance in prayer. And yet others may need
perseverance in faith, or in loving one's neighbor. No matter what
spiritual need we lack, by persevering in prayer, we can be assured
that it will be granted to us by the grace of the Heavenly Father and
the power of the Holy Spirit so we may be sanctified in Christ. And
this is the Good News of today.
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