May the peace of Christ Reign in our Hearts,
Today’s Gospel speaks about prayer and two essential characteristics of prayer.
Obviously God hears every prayer.
There is no prayer that God does not hear.
It is impossible for us to live out of range of God.
God knows all, God sees all, God hears all.
Try as we might (and all of us try),
there is no God free zone in our lives
nor can their ever be a God free zone in our lives.
In this parable as he teaches us about prayer
Jesus give us the example of a widow,
the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak.
Jesus reminds us that like the widow in the story we are called to pray constantly and not grow weary.
All of us must strive to live in a state of constant prayer.
The unjust judge says that the widow’s petition was answered because she would not give up.
If even an unjust judge will answer a petitioner
if they ask long enough and hard enough…
..how much more will God who is not an unjust judge
but a loving father answer our prayers.
So you see the first characteristic of prayer is constancy. We must pray always.
Our lives must become prayer.
The widow’s example also gives us another characteristic of prayer and that is trust.
She trusted that eventually her petition would be answered.
Like her we have to learn to trust.
We have to learn to trust.
We have to learn to trust the very God who gives us life
and gives us breath,
and gives us the ability and privilege to love.
No only must our prayer be constant,
but we also have to have complete trust that it will be answered in the best possible way no matter what.
Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that we know more than God.
Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that our prayer was not answered because it was not answered in the way we desired.
In other words we really don’t trust God.
Dear friends each and every prayer we offer should end something like this…
“Father I think this is what I need, and this is what I ask, but I know and I trust that
you know best and you love me.
Father your will be done.Your will be done O God.
That’s how Jesus finished his most fervent prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and that is how we need to finish our prayers each and every one.
If you look at the first reading the message is the same.
As long as Moses kept his hands in the air the battle with Amalek went well.
Whenever he gave up, whenever his prayer was not constant things went poorly.
Finally it was only with the assistance of Aaron and Hur that Moses was able to keep his hands up and remain in prayer.
We all know that it is not easy to hold our arms in the air for long periods of time.
And we all know that it is not easy to pray constantly and trust constantly that our prayer will be answered.
So you see holy ones.
The last message of today's readings is simply this.
Like Moses needed Aaron and Hur to sustain his prayer during battle, we need each other, and we need the Church to sustain ourselves in our prayer.
If our prayer is constant,
and If we trust God completely,
then when the Son of Man comes he will indeed find faith on the earth.
He will find our faith.
Amen
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