29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Persistent Prayer)
Today’s Gospel gives us a story of a persistent widow. In a world where women seldom had status,
widows of Jesus’ time had to fend for themselves financially, seeking help from family and friends. And as
Jesus describes, it’s through persistence that she was able to persuade the town’s judge to offer a
judgment that would bring her some relief. Jesus praises her, and thus anyone, who calls out to (God) day
and night.
Jesus’ point in this, as St. Luke tells us at the beginning of the reading was to remind his disciples of
“the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary”, to be persistent in seeking from God what
they need. And to give them assurance, he told them that if the dishonest judge in his story could be
persuaded to respond to one’s needs, be sure that God will do so, so much more.
Well, I suspect everyone of us has prayed at some point for what we believe we need. And even
when it seems it’s a prayer for something good and reasonable, our prayers aren’t always answered as we
might hope. So, how does it work? Is God listening? Does prayer matter?
Sometime around the year 400, St. Augustine once wrote a letter about prayer to a widow name
Anicia Foltonia Proba.
“It may perplex us that God asks us to pray, when he knows what we need
before we ask him”, but He wants us to “exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able
to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and
limited to receive it.....Enlarge your desires (through prayer)...” (Letter to Proba, Liturgy of the Hours, vol.
IV, p 408-9).
Read those words from Augustine again. They tells us that even when we may be genuinely asking
God for good things, right things, such as healing for a sick person, or peace for a person in crisis, God has
been trying to give us the things we truly need all along, even if it’s not what we asked for. Too often, we
simply haven’t recognized what God intends to give or furthermore, how to accept it. And I remind us that
prayer, ultimately, is intended to change us, not God.
In this month of October in which we call to mind Mary’s role in our faith, as Our Lady of the Holy
Rosary. We see in the Hebrew Scriptures, something important and beautiful in Jewish heritage: it was the
powerful influence of the king’s mother, particularly of King David’s line: the Hebrew word for it is Gebirah,
meaning the “Queen Mother”. We see this with King Solomon. When his mother came to see him, he
“stood up to meet her and paid her homage. Then he sat down upon his throne, and a throne was provided
for the king’s mother, who sat at his right”. When she announced to him that she had a request, the king
replied: “Ask it, my mother, for I will not refuse you” (1 Kings 2:19-20).
With that in mind, I remind us that one of the most common titles for Jesus throughout the Gospels
is Son of David. As the Son of David and heir to the enduring line of kings, Jesus is King. In faith and with
trust, we pray to our King through the powerful intercession of the Gebirah, the Queen Mother—whom we
know as Mary. She will go to her son the King on our behalf. That is why we plead through her, in prayer.
St. Augustine further said in his Letter to Proba:
“The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed….In this
faith, hope and love we pray always with unwearied desire….The more fervent the desire, the more worthy
will be its fruit….Desire unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and ask it of him who alone is able to give it” (ibid.).
Again, it’s a call to express our desires, in order that our hearts might be expanded and prepared to give what God wishes to give. With persistent faith manifest in prayer, let us
trust like that.