29th Sunday Year C - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2016

Let us forget about today’s story for a moment, and focus firstly on Jesus’ concern in telling it. Luke tells us right at the start that Jesus was anxious that the disciples “never lose heart”, and at the end of the story, shows Jesus worrying if, “when the Son of Man comes, … he [will] find any faith on earth”. Because of this fear, Jesus cautioned his disciples “to pray continually”. So the point of today’s story is to highlight and commend the persistence of the widow. The story is not about God – other than to declare how radically different God is from any “unjust judge”.

We also need to remember that, when Jesus spoke of praying, he had in mind the prayer he had taught his disciples not long beforehand, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done – on earth…”. Jesus knew that that prayer would create problems.

How would they make sense of the fact that the prayer he taught does not seem to work – any more for them then, as for us now? Our world seems to be becoming less and less like God’s kingdom and people less and less interested in seeking and doing God’s will. Take just one example. In the face of no less than 65 million refugees currently fleeing war, hunger and persecution, nations seem to have increasingly tightened their borders and people hardened their hearts. Pope Francis, in the face of the current refugee crisis, consistently laments that we, the comfortable and well-off, have forgotten how to weep. We have closed our eyes and turned our backs, wishing like children that the problem would magically dissolve in smoke.

Was Jesus kidding his disciples, and us, or was he simply wrong, when he said that “God [would] see justice done, and done speedily”? Do we just pray more, perhaps include the problem in the Prayers of the Faithful at Mass, and handball it back to God? What would we really achieve, even if we were to “pray continually”? It is very easy to think it all too hard, and, in our heart of hearts to fear that prayer usually doesn’t work. As Jesus warned, we “lose heart”, we even lose “faith”.

Let us look more closely at prayer. There is prayer that hopes to change God. And there is prayer that hopes to change ourselves.  If we think that prayer really changes God, we need to look again at what we think God is like. I would hope that we pray continually so that God might help to change us. But since we are fashioned in God’s own image, God has profound respect for human dignity and for human freedom. So any change that will happen in us will necessarily be a work of cooperation, God and us together.

Back again to prayer. There is prayer that rarely seems to change us, and there is prayer that is more likely to change us. Personally, I am not a great fan of saying prayers, particularly prayers composed by others, even if they were saints. If I use prayers composed by others, I do not so much say them as reflect on them, chew over them, give them time to become my own. My preference, however, is to sit in silence and to try to switch off my mind, to stop thinking. I say nothing, other than have a brief phrase running in the background to help me gently get back to stillness after I have wandered off following some distraction once again. I never quite succeed, but the experience of failure turns out to be surprisingly important.

A spin-off of this prayer is that practitioners begin to notice the presence of God everywhere, in most unexpected places and most unlikely people, even in those we do not like and whose actions we habitually condemn. God is at work in our world if only we can loosen up and see. Wherever there is love, even the most imperfect love, there is God. God's kingdom is coming!