29th Sunday in Ordinary Time / C 17/10/2010
Luke 18, 1-8 (p. 799)
After we have maintained the faith and gratitude, the Lord Jesus invites us this Sunday has a reflection on the prayer. And it USING the story of the judge and the widow. Parable so clear that it speaks for itself. If Jesus tells this parable has a similar one in the same Gospel (the man's coat bother his friend came to ask for bread), it is in a very specific purpose: "to show us that we must always pray without being discouraged. " This Gospel is not a general education on the prayer for two reasons. The first, obvious is that discusses the characteristics of a Christian prayer: it is never discouraged, so she perseveres. The second is that this is one of the forms of Christian prayer: prayer request. Indeed, the widow asked the judge to do justice. And we finally see the link this teaching with the reality of faith. Prayer and faith of course being inseparable.
Why Jesus insists so much on the quality that should be our prayer, perseverance? Because he knows us better than ourselves we can not know. He knows that because of sin but also because we are embodied beings, body, mind and soul, we can very quickly get discouraged in our spiritual life. God can seem so distant times or missing ... Jesus also knows that when we ask anything in prayer to God and we do not get it immediately, we give up easily. We practice prayer request in the spirit of profitability. And if we think we are not heard we're moving on. It is against this temptation that the Lord wants us to warn. Let me translate a trivial manner the message of the parable: it must break God's feet in the manner of this poor widow! Let our human experience the easiest way to understand how our weakness exposes us to give up the fight of prayer. Those of you who have or have had teenagers and you young people you know from experience how difficult it is to persevere in a choice. One man wants to play the piano, another wants to put tennis, and yet another wants to create a band with his friends etc.. How many have started full of enthusiasm for the final drop after 6 months or a year? I take the example of learning the piano. At first it is hard work and patience for very little results. In the beginning there is very little pleasure in repeating exercises and scales ... Only the perseverance that brings joy to play well! Of course prayer is of another order, supernatural, and not everything depends no we in that order. Because prayer is primarily a grace of God, a gift of his love, since we can not pray without faith and charity. It is nevertheless true that for the part that is ours, of our freedom, the comparison with perseverance in learning the piano instructs us. I think that the more we pray, we are more faithful to prayer, prayer becomes more comfortable and easy. Perseverance in prayer we can taste, God willing, his love, his presence in a more intense and stronger. When I say we need so bugging the Good God, it must be understood in the context of our Gospel. Prayer request has nothing to do with the whims of children exasperate their parents until they got what they wanted. The parable tells of a widow, and therefore a poor woman. Here is the first condition for a good prayer request: keep a low presence of God. It is this humility that allows us to say in truth: Thy will be done! If our prayer request perseverance we set aside the application of the "Our Father" when we are no longer in Christian prayer. Finally the other condition for a good prayer request is Jesus himself who gives us with the end of this Gospel: "The Son of man, when he comes, he will find faith on earth? This anguished question to us. So we know how to ask in prayer. It is obvious that we do not have the right to request things wrong but only what seems good for ourselves and for others. We do so with humility, faith and perseverance. As no prayer is wasted. Finally let us remember that the miracle of prayer request is occasionally elsewhere as in its fulfillment. For every prayer transforms us and makes us better. I conclude with an example of that. If I pray for the conversion of my enemy, one who hurts me, maybe it will not change that. This does not mean I'm not hears. For it is possible that through this prayer perseverance God increase my strength and patience to love despite all this person wants me unsympathetic or evil.
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