29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Sunday 16th October 2016)
Faith is the key – (Luke 18:1-8)
Do you remember the story of St. Monica? She is the mother of another saint, St. Augustine. Monica prayed for years for her wayward son to turn from a worldly life and come to her Christian faith. And her prayers were answered…eventually!
Monica is a saintly example of today’s Gospel parable. There a widow badgers a judge to give her justice against an adversary. Jesus adds that the judge was one who neither feared God nor respected any human being. Yet despite this lack of fairness, in the end the judge breaks down and grants the widows request. And like any parable, Jesus adds a punch line….. “Now will not God see justice done to His chosen who cry to Him day and night even when He delays to help them?”
Now one of the great problems that we have with prayer is the seeming lack of an answer from God in many cases. Yet I believe that our Gospel passage today does offer some hints on how to enter into the dilemma of Gods apparent silence in response to our prayers. First, its message is to pray always without becoming weary. Like St. Monica and the widow in today’s Gospel, we must be persistent. Second, as we come back to God again and again, we must be honest with God. We must share our feelings of disappointment, doubt or even our frustration. From an honest prayer comes a greater intimacy with God. God can prepare us to open to a bigger reality. One woman I spoke with who suffered a great loss said that for her, prayer was like looking through a keyhole. We do not have the broad view that God has on the other side. And that is part of the mystery with which Jesus ends today’s Gospel, when He asks, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” In the end, it is all about faith. Faith that grows slowly over time, until we allow God to show us the mystery beyond the keyhole.