423. Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Meditations no. 616 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

God hears persevering and trusting prayer.

Today’s liturgy speaks to us of the power of persevering and trusting prayer. The first reading, taken from the book of Exodus, tells us that while the people of Israel were on their way to Sinai, when they arrived at the town called Raphidim, a nomadic horde came to meet them, powerful and warlike, and attacked them. Moses ordered Joshua to choose men from among the people and to engage in battle while he, standing on the top of the mountain and with the staff of God in his hand, called on the Lord. And it came to pass that when Moses raised his hands, Israel was victorious, but when he let them fall, Amalek was victorious. When Moses’ hands were tired, they brought a stone to him, put it under him, and sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held his hands, each on one side. And so his hands held aloft until sunset. Joshua defeated Amalek and his people by the sword.

The biblical passage emphasizes the importance of prayer. Moses knows that petitioning God is necessary to win the battle, and that he must pray with perseverance. Therefore, when he no longer has the strength to keep his arms raised, he allows those who accompany him to hold them until the fight is over. God allowed himself to be overcome by Moses’ prayer and intervened on behalf of his people, who achieved victory against a strong enemy.

We have learned to treat the Lord in trusting and persevering prayer, convinced that we will never find anyone in our lives who listens to us with more interest and greater attention than He does. Therefore, if the question ever arises: why insist on prayer? Doesn’t the Lord hear us from the first moment?, we must be sure that God certainly listens, but divine Providence somehow counts on our constancy in the petition, so that His plans are carried out and for our good.

Other times it may happen that we ask insistently and, nevertheless, the Lord does not listen to us. How to behave then? St. Josemaría gives us the answer. Have you seen a mother when she sees that her son, a three-year-old boy, has taken a box of matches and begins to light them? What does she do? She runs and takes the box of matches, and extinguishes the ones she has lit, because, without realizing it, she can set fire to her clothes and burn herself. The child may think that Mom is bad, that she does not let him play with that beautiful thing… .

For you and I, before God, are like little children. Our Father, on the other hand, is Eternal: what are our years before Him worth? And He is more fond of us than all the mothers of the world are for their children. Perhaps we, sometimes, because of our naivety, ask for things that do not really suit us, and the Lord does not grant them to us for that. At other times, He does not give them to us because He wants us to ask Him for more faith, with more trust, with more perseverance. So He continues to ask.

Insisting on the petition already brings us many benefits. In the first place, we rectify the intention, it disposes us to accept the holy Will of God and to ask for what truly helps us to love Him more; we manifest our radical inadequacy; we become more humble; we show that we really want what we ask for and that we want to fulfill His Will, and in the end we feel more reason to thank God for His goodness. If we persevere in prayer we discover the presence of God, his fatherhood, his infinite love, even when we think that he does not respond as we expected.

The Responsorial Psalm, one of the psalms that pilgrims sang when they glimpsed the mountains of Judea, foreseeing the joy of the encounter with the Lord in his Temple, echoes this faith in the constant and trusting prayer that permeates the biblical texts. At the pilgrim’s exclamation - I lift up my eyes to the mountains: where will help come to me? - we hear the answer full of confidence in God’s power: my help comes to me from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth.

Constancy in prayer. The parable of the wicked judge.

THE GOSPEL today takes up a parable of Jesus on the need for persevering prayer: the parable of the widow and the wicked judge. Before introducing it, Saint Luke explicitly indicates that Jesus intended to explain to his disciples that we must pray without becoming discouraged. Whenever we feel in our hearts a desire to improve, to respond more generously to the Lord, and we seek a guide, a clear direction for our Christian life, the Holy Spirit brings to mind the words of the Gospel: we must pray perseveringly and not lose heart (Lk 18:1). Prayer is the foundation of all supernatural work; with prayer we are omnipotent and, if we did without this resource, we would achieve nothing.

This parable is very instructive. Faced with a judge who lacked the minimum conditions necessary to judge with rectitude and truth, the widow - symbol of the defenseless and helpless person - did not cease to ask him to do her justice against her adversary. In the end, despite the continuous denials and his stubborn disinterestedness, the unjust judge finally gave in, saying to himself: although I neither fear God nor respect men, since this widow is bothering me, I will do her justice, so that she does not continue to come to bother me.

The widow got what she wanted. And the reason for her success was not that she had changed the judge’s heart, but his insistent request, his steadfastness in demanding what was due to him. Jesus added to conclude his parable: pay attention to what the unjust judge says. Will not God do justice to his elect who cry out to him day and night, and make them wait? Amen, I say to you, he will give them justice without delay.

Jesus’ words place God at the centre of the parable and make us understand that for the efficacy of prayer two wills concur. One is never lacking: the will of God, always full of mercy and goodness. He himself, at the request of Moses who wished to see his face, passed before him proclaiming: Lord, Lord, God compassionate and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in mercy and fidelity; who maintains his mercy for a thousand generations, who forgives guilt, crime and sin, but leaves nothing unpunished. But for prayer to be effective, the interest of the creature must also intervene, which is demonstrated in this constancy. All good things come from God our Lord, who, in his most loving Providence, counts on us to ask him again and again, with perseverance, for whatever we need. Moreover, in praying, we recognize our smallness, our insufficiency: alone, we can do nothing! That is why, in the Work, prayer has been and will always be our only weapon: our atomic bomb. We must pray a lot, put ourselves in God’s hands and ask, with stubborn delicacy, but stubbornly!

We must examine whether our prayer is firm, insistent, trusting. Persevere in prayer, as the Master advises. This starting point will be the origin of your peace, your joy, your serenity and, therefore, your supernatural and human effectiveness.

Let us think concretely about how pleasing to God is prayer for the spiritual needs of the soul, both our own and those of the people we know and know, relatives and friends. In particular, we must pray with trust and insistence for the Church and for the Pope, united as always to the intentions of the Father. As our Founder urged us, we must continually pray to the Lord - he cries, necesses! (Is 58:1) - with impatience and with urgency. Holy impatience - not burdens, nerves, or selfishness - is a manifestation of supernatural zeal. And we will notice that it is holy, if, at the same time that we urge the Lord, we feel the reproach that we can and must live a greater dedication, a more continuous prayer.

Persevering prayer is the fruit of faith.

I call upon You because You hear me, my God. Incline your ear to me, listen to my words, we read in the Antiphon at the entrance of the Mass. Faith in God listening to us and answering us is the source from which prayer flows. At the end of the parable of the widow and the wicked judge, Jesus added a phrase, spoken as if in passing, but which leaves the conscience troubled: when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

St. Augustine, commenting on this parable, perhaps noticing these words, introduces this observation: “The reading of the Holy Gospel impels us to pray and to believe, and not to lean on ourselves, but on the Lord. … If faith falters, prayer perishes. Who should pray if he does not believe? Therefore the blessed Apostle, exhorting us to pray, said:”Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” And to show that faith is the source of prayer and that the river cannot flow when the spring dries up of the water, he adds: “And how can they call on Him of whom they have not heard?” (Rom 10:13-14). Let us therefore believe in order to be able to pray. And that the faith through which we pray may not fail, let us pray. Prayer flows from faith, and the prayer that flows begs for firmness for faith itself.”

Then, faith, supernatural faith. When faith falters, man tends to imagine God as if he were far away, without hardly caring about his children. He thinks of religion as something juxtaposed, for when there is no other remedy; he waits, he does not explain on what basis, ostentatious manifestations, unusual events. When faith vibrates in the soul, one discovers, on the other hand, that the steps of the Christian are not separated from the same ordinary and habitual human life. And that this great holiness, which God demands of us, is enclosed here and now, in the small things of each day.

God wants to do great things in us and through us, in the Church and in the whole world. But we must pray confidently and perseveringly. Our response to God is called faith, and the more faith we have, the more we will want to talk to God. This is prayer. It is necessary, therefore, that our faith be alive, that it really lead us to believe in God and to maintain a constant dialogue with Him. The Christian life must be a life of constant prayer, seeking to be in the presence of the Lord from morning to night and from night to morning. The Christian is never a solitary man, since he lives in continuous contact with God, who is close to us and in heaven.

This is how Jesus’ life passed, and the disciples and then the first Christians learned from him. Remember what the Gospels tell us about Jesus. At times, he spent the whole night engaged in intimate conversation with his Father. How the first disciples fell in love with the figure of the praying Christ! After contemplating this constant attitude of the Master, they asked him: “Domine, twelve I will pray to us” (Lk 11:1), Lord, teach us to pray like this.

Let us meditate on the figure of Mary Most Holy, who kept all these things - those of her Son - pondering them in her heart. Mary, Teacher of Prayer. “See how she asks for her Son, at Cana. And how she insists, without being discouraged, with perseverance.” “And how she succeeds.

“Learn.”