Judge and widow

Persistent prayer is a school of trust.

In Lourdes, Fatima, and Loretto, but also in many other pilgrimage places around the world and around the Marian chapels in small towns and villages around the world, there are several tables with shorter words like “Thanks!” and “Thanks for hearing… Long walls form the chapels on the well-known Bratislava Deep Road. A whole book about interesting fates has been published. They are a testament to faith and proof that God listens to those who ask Him with confidence.

In Ephesus, like Jerusalem, where the Wailing Wall is known, there are huge walls with written requests. They talk more about urgent human needs. However, it would be interesting to see what wall would be needed to attach tables with unheard requests. I do not want to blaspheme, but there would probably be a disproportionate number. Unheard prayer is a difficult question. It often resonates already in the biblical psalms. For this reason, Saint Augustine responds with a verbal toy: “Mali, mala, male pettiness—evil (we), please be evil and bad.” This is only a partial answer. Innocent in bombed cities, a mother begging for her child at risk, a man seeking faith, begging for a sincere, fervent, and good cause. And the Father, who loves his children, is still silent for years. Is this just a test of endurance?

Saint Augustine points to a deeper reason. If God does not respond immediately to our needs, it causes us to need him longer, to turn to him longer, and to draw closer to him. Often so much that we will gradually understand how it was better for us if God did not immediately hear us. The greatest gift is not the thing we asked for, but the God we have come to know. Something similar to my friend’s experience. During repeated handling of his business affairs, he met his future wife as a clerk. She has been living with her happily for decades and is very grateful that the matter was not resolved while she waited.

By the parable of the Judge and the Widow, in which the Teacher uses the game of contrasts, Jesus wants to underline “how to keep praying and not fainting” to encourage us to persevere. And this is just one of the basic features of prayer. Perseverance, however, does not mean constantly repeating the same thing. It is a time of dialogue: asking God’s will and surrendering to his providential decisions. Perseverance is the growth of trust, the recognition that God’s thoughts are different from our thoughts. Even in everyday life, waiting for the results of a medical examination, answering a job application, or making other serious decisions, we ask ourselves fundamental questions and consider alternatives to what we do; all the more, it is necessary to do it in constant prayer.

Elsewhere in the Gospel of Luke, following the challenge of “Seek and find, knock and open to you,” and assuring that if a son asks his father for a fish, he will not give him a snake, Jesus adds interesting keywords: “Yes, the prayer of prayer should be specific; we should put in it what pushes us, but it should also be given and begging for the gift of the Holy Spirit, the ‘Giver of all gifts,’ which will help us to know and receive God’s will, want what God wants, and he himself will make our prayers to God.” But there is only one way to learn persistent, surrendered prayer: pray with confidence and perseverance.