Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
As Jesus says in today’s gospel the theme of today’s readings is about the necessity to pray always without becoming weary (Lk 18:1). There are common strands between the first reading and the Gospel reading. Each of the readings show us the connection between three things: God, the human person and the situation confronting the human persons. Thus, in the first reading there is God, there is Moses and there is the battle against the Amalekites. In the Gospel reading, there is the judge who cared about nothing and nobody, there is the widow, and there is situation where the widow faced an adversary. In each of these situations, the human person is looking for help from God for facing the adversity. What are the readings really saying to us today?
Based on today’s readings, I would like to define prayer as the link between three things – God, our life situation, and me. The most obvious elements among these three apparently is our self-awareness. Each day we get up and we are aware of our own presence. Second is our life situation. I am reminded of the 33 miners and their spectacular rescue from half-a-mile under the ground. I am sure that each of us finds ourselves facing some challenging situation each day. Be it friendship, family, health, finances, or work, each day we face challenges. Prayer simply means that we allow God to be the link between our life situation and us. The miners trapped in the Chilean mines are a great example of this. Each of them, as they came out wore a T-shirt that had Ps 94:5 printed on it. It read, “Whose hand holds the depths of the earth; who owns the tops of the mountains.” Prayer does not necessarily mean that we have our way in this situation. Prayer means that we allow God to be God in this situation.
Second, prayer is not only about changing the situation. Prayer changes us. The Israelites had the better of the battle against Amalek, as long as Moses had his hands lifted up. As soon as he began to lower it, they began to lose. So they found men who would hold Moses’ hands up. No book on war strategy has this one in it. In the gospel, the widow was heard for her stubborn persistence. My interpretation of these events is that both Moses and the widow thought that their action was having an influence on God. In fact, the effect of their action was on them. By keeping his hands raised Moses learned to depend on God and to keep his eyes focused on God. By constantly nagging the judge the woman learned perseverance and persistence. The only unchanging factor is God. Even in my own life, I know how many times I have wanted things to change without allowing for change in my life. Prayer does not always change things, but it certainly does change us. So for example, we cannot remain in serious sin and expect change. We cannot continue to hold grudges in our hearts and expect change. We cannot be lazy and casual about our relationship with God and expect change. Prayer changes us before it can change the situation. The point is this: Even without asking, God has already fulfilled the deepest longing of human hearts. What we want most is that we have eternal life; that we are forever in peace with no pain and sorrow; where we shall not want anymore; this longing for eternity, for salvation is already fulfilled. God gave us his only Son to fulfil that need. So when we persist in prayer, we are approaching a God who is all love, who cares about us and in his eagerness to see us happy, has fulfilled our deepest need. - Fr. Satish Joseph