29th.
Sunday of Year (C)
(Exodus
17:8-13; 2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:2; Luke
18:1-8)
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Our readings today speak to us about both prayer and
warfare, and that can seem to us incongruous or even contradictory. Traditionally,
however, Christians have always understood life here on earth as a time of
spiritual combat under the banner of Jesus: a battle against the devil and our
own ignorance and weakness.
The first reading spoke most clearly about prayer as a weapon
in that combat; and since most weapons need ammunition, we then heard St. Paul,
in the second reading, speaking of Holy Scripture as our arsenal; while, in the
Gospel reading, it was Jesus Himself Who finally and fully assured us of the
ultimate superiority of our weaponry.
It should be noticed, however, that Jesus spoke about
prayer in a surprisingly ambiguous manner, setting -- perhaps intentionally – a
somewhat ludicrous scenario for today’s parable.
Try and picture it for yourself: on the one hand there is
an unscrupulous judge, an officially-licensed criminal we might say today. Then, on the other hand there is this widow,
a woman of whom we know nothing else, except that she could nag! The pseudo-judge had his finger in many pies
no doubt and he was not interested in little matters concerning unimportant
people, he wanted money or, if money was not all that plentiful in his
catchment area, so to speak, he wanted the things that are associated with
money, that is, gifts, influence, and prestige.
Most assuredly, he had no time for small fry.
However, wherever this legal thug/thief went, he found
himself being followed by this woman whom he regarded, no doubt, as a
troublesome hag, whose voice was constantly ringing in his ears as she cried
out again and again:
Render a
just decision for me against my adversary!
Can you imagine what a good comedy director could make
of such a story? A criminal justiciar, an
unscrupulous magistrate, beginning to tear his hair out because of the fact
that wherever he went he heard that same shrill voice repeating that same cry-cum-demand,
‘Give justice for me against my adversary!’
Why did Jesus use a parable which could easily been
regarded as a parody? Could it, indeed,
be the case that He wanted His disciples to smile a little at the thought of
anyone being able to seriously conceive a doubt about God’s unfailing
attentiveness to our prayers or question His willingness and power to answer
them? Jesus had just previously been
talking most seriously to His disciples about His Second Coming, foreshadowed,
as He said, by the dire memory of Noah’s destroying flood and the fire and
brimstone at Lot’s departure from Sodom.
Here, however, in this immediately
subsequent parable He can be understood
to be saying, “Give serious matters serious attention by all means; but, as for
doubts about the usefulness of prayer to God, treat such imaginations as they
deserve: they are laughable for anyone who knows God, as, indeed, you should
know Him by now.”
However, Jesus did add a more serious and more consoling final
observation:
He (God) will see to it that justice is done speedily for
His chosen ones who call out to Him day and night.
In those words, Jesus spoke as One who knew God, indeed, as
the One who knew His Father and reverenced Him totally: “He does hear
and will answer your prayers speedily. As
soon as your true prayer begins He will be answering; and though that answer
may take years to come to fulfilment, it will always, and throughout, be found
to have been as complete as the circumstances in which you found yourself or
had placed yourself would allow. However -- and this is why I speak this
parable to you at this moment -- the ultimate question will not be one about
God, but about mankind; for:
When
the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?
There Jesus hinted at the large numbers of nominal Christians
and Catholics who allow doubts about God – ‘does He hear my prayers?’ – not
only to surface in their heart but also to then hang around in the nooks and crannies
of their mind, unaware that it is they themselves who are thereby beginning
to lose hold of their end of the bond of faith with God, by taking their worldly
fears, their pseudo-spiritual anxieties, too seriously.
And so, People of God, be in no doubt that the life of a
Christian on earth is a time for combat, spiritual combat. As St. Paul told Timothy in our second
reading, perseverance is essential:
Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed
because you know from whom you learned it.
It was in Mother Church that we were first taught about
the importance and the efficacy of prayer to God, and it is Mother Church who
gives us, and helps us to understand, the arsenal of the Scriptures, as St.
Paul again said:
From infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which
are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God, and is useful
for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in
righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for
every good work.
Joy in the Lord is a supremely important part of the
armour of a Christian; and so, let us all learn from Jesus and never allow any
foolish doubts about God hearing our prayers to linger on and hang around at
the back of our mind. Most certainly,
with such thoughts still troubling
your imagination, your prayer may not be the best of which you are capable;
but, despite all that, prayer that is sincerely made will, unquestionably,
be acceptable to God, and will, most certainly, be heard and answered by your
Father in heaven. So, let us all once
more hear and resolve to follow the teaching of St. Paul, that most faithful
through-thick-and-thin disciple of Jesus, who tells us from his own life
experience as the Apostle of the Gentiles:
I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels
nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor
height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans
8:38-9:1)
But, more even than all that, we have the supreme example
of Our Blessed Lord Himself praying during His agony in the Garden of
Gethsemane. He implored His Father, He
wept, and prayed to exhaustion, and yet not one of the evangelists or other
apostolic writers tells us that Jesus heard anything from His Father in answer
to His prayer: so far as we know from Scripture, He received no audible – so
desirable, humanly speaking -- reply.
Why? Jesus had evidently willed
that the Apostles should hear His Own prayer, why not His Father’s
answer??
Jesus Himself tells us what His Father’s will and silence
meant to Him (John 12: 50):
I know
that His command is eternal life.
Jesus, on earth, loved His Father above all, and as an
essential aspect of His earthly mission and human saving-experience, He sacrificed
His own will, His own Self, to do His Father’s will for mankind’s
salvation: as He Himself said, He came on earth not to do His own will but the
will of His Father Who sent Him. He knew -- with His whole mind, heart, and existential
being -- that His Father’s deliberate will was, is, and ever will be, a supreme
expression of His merciful love towards weak and sinful human beings
aspiring to heavenly fulfilment in Jesus by the Spirit. Jesus was sent as Saviour for mankind: He
saved us by His suffering as One of us, He redeemed us by His obedience as the only-begotten
Son of His heavenly Father.
