Persistence in Prayer

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

The Our Father prayer, which we usually pray at Mass or when reciting the rosary, comes from the Gospel of St Matthew. St Luke’s version is shorter and certainly more stark and direct in its wording. If St Matthew has his version of this prayer at the beginning of our Lord’s ministry while He was preaching the Sermon on the Mount, St Luke places the Lord’s Prayer about halfway through his Gospel. At this point, the Lord is on His journey to Jerusalem where He knows He will have to suffer before His mission can be accomplished. He has predicted His death twice. He has told His disciples that if they want to follow Him, they will have to suffer too. At this crucial point, a disciple asks our Lord to teach them how to pray. Our Lord then provides a catechesis on prayer.

“Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” This request raises a question. Why do John’s and Jesus’s disciples need to be taught to pray? Adult Jewish males were expected to pray morning, afternoon and evening in the direction of Jerusalem, three times a day and before and after meals. Like the Pharisees and scribes, John’s disciples fasted and prayed. The Lord’s disciples, on the other hand, had been criticised because they did not seem to be as fastidious in these pious practices.

One of the functions of having distinctive prayers was to create and maintain a sense of identity and community for members of a sect. At a certain point in the Gospel, our Lord’s disciples didn’t have to fast and pray because He was still among them. But now, the Lord is preparing them for the time when He will not be among them much longer. The community needs sustenance for the future, a foundation for their continued communal life, and such sustenance and the foundation of their bond would be found in prayer. Remember the Lord’s promise: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:19–20.) Christ will continue to remain with them whenever they prayed.

What was needed by the early Christian community to sustain them in times of crises, and inspire and empower them for mission, continues to be relevant to us today. In a world where groups try to build social cohesiveness through team building exercises and other forms of group dynamics, the Christian community’s need for prayer remains foundational. If we are only united in function and efficiency, then we cannot claim to be members of the Body of Christ. But if Christ is our inspiration and model, prayer must be the ultimate foundation of our bond. The Church without prayer, is as inconceivable as a Church without Christ.

After the Lord had given a helpful pattern for prayer, He turns immediately to one of the primary problems in prayer, a problem that will become obvious almost at once. God does not always answer upon our first request. Indeed, experience tells us that when we pray earnestly, sometimes nothing seems to happen. In response to this dilemma, our Lord calls for persistence in prayer. He calls for us to keep on praying even when it seems that nothing is happening.

The Lord uses a parable to illustrate this point. The scenario of the parable places it as an emergency request, made at a ridiculous hour to a reluctant neighbour. This is not because the Lord is comparing the reluctant neighbour to God. He is not suggesting that there is any reluctance in God to respond to our prayers. However, there are times that God does “appear” to be like the reluctant friend, especially when we don’t seem to get any answer. However, He is assuring us that if a reluctant friend will get up at midnight to respond to the persistent appeal of a friend, how more so will the God of love and mercy, hear our prayers and answer our request.

What the Lord has illustrated in the parable, He now sets forth in the precept. Our praying is to be marked by persistence. If the answer does not come at once, we are to keep on praying. If we do not find what we seek at once, we keep on seeking. If the door does not open to us at once, then we keep on knocking. We are to see progression in the use of ask, seek, knock. Everything in the person’s being is involved in an attempt to break through to the answer. No wonder many of our prayers go unanswered. So many give up after only a few feeble attempts. If we go on asking, seeking, and knocking, then we can be certain of results.

Does this mean, that if I persist in praying that I will get exactly that which I ask of God? I hope not. “No” is just as much an answer to prayer as “yes”. No wise parent always says “yes” to the requests of their child. Many of us have forgotten this time-tested piece of parenting wisdom, especially when we are constantly bombarded by incessant requests from an entitled generation. We imagine that if we give our children what they want whenever they ask for it, they will be finally satisfied and stop harassing us. The problem of a permissive culture is that it creates an entitled generation. As that iconic song from the Greatest Showman declares: it will never be enough! Never! Never! Ever!

Sometimes we need to say “no”' because the thing requested, is not really the thing needed. No amount of persistence will wear down a good parent if he knows the thing requested is not the right thing for his child. It took me a long time to grasp this truth because it is always easier to say “yes” to parishioners. Sometimes the proper and prudent thing to do is to say “wait”. The thing sought will be a good thing later, but the person is not ready or the timing is not right. The same could be said of God. But we can be certain that as we persist in prayer, that God is going to respond to the prayer. Our prayers will not be ignored. But for the moment, God’s answer is “wait!”

So, what is the value of waiting? What is the value of our persistence in prayer? Through prayer, daily life can become a classroom of communion. Through prayer, darkness can be dispelled and the path of progress illuminated. Through prayer, we can learn to die to self and to our insatiable sense of entitlement. Prayer does not change the mind of God, rather prayer changes us. Through prayer, we learn to conform to the Will of God and not demand that He confirms to our wishes. Through prayer, we are drawn by Love into a deepening relationship with Jesus, who died for us on the cross.

God holds nothing back from those whom He loves. He gives us the Holy Spirit, His life and grace. But most of all He wishes to give us the gift of salvation, the invitation to be with Him in Paradise forever. That is our real problem. It is not that our requests are too big for Him to grant but rather, we often ask too little. We ask for the pleasures of our earthly lives, we ask for good health and longevity, even though we know that one day our mortality will catch up with us. The Lord waits for us to ask the one thing which matters most – our salvation, Eternal Life. In prayer, we find the strength to pull ourselves up, after each fall. In prayer, we find the strength and the resolve to bear with our daily crosses. In prayer, we find our way after a life of asking and searching at the very gates of heaven, where our persistent knocking will finally bear fruit, where the answer to our deepest longings awaits us.