Welcome to our parish

20 October 2019                                                          29^th Sunday Year C

A GOD’S EYE VIEW

The story of the widow pestering the judge for justice in today’s gospel cannot fail to amuse. The poor woman (widows were on the bottom rung of society because of their economic status) must have worn the (important) judge down over time. Judges did not work in buildings; they set up their court in a tent that travelled around their region, rather like our Assizes. So every time he turned up at a new place and pitched his tent, there she was! Eventually he decided to do something just for a quiet life. And it’s her persistence in prayer that Jesus praises.

Being persistent in prayer is probably one of the greatest challenges facing us as Christians. It’s easy not to pray. We can claim we’re busy doing good and don’t have the time. We can say that we never seem to get an answer and so what’s the point? We can look back on things we asked for that never materialised and so wonder whether God is really bothered by our prayer at all.

Prayer isn’t words. Prayer is being constantly tuned into God so that we see and interpret our experiences from God’s point of view. If we can learn to appreciate God’s vantage point then we become less absorbed with our own demands for God to act in this way or that.

There is a difference between being persistent and being a pesterer. Being persistent in our prayer is a sign that we are being faithful to staying close to God. Barraging God with what we think should happen is a sign that we have probably not yet come close to wanting God’s will to reign.

Prayer is a sign that we want to become closer to God and to what God wants for his kingdom on earth. Perhaps it is not too much to say that that by praying we are expressing our desire to become like God. Yes, it is natural to tell God of our plans, our hopes and our fears. It’s natural to place others in God’s “mind” and ask for their wellbeing. But prayer is first and foremost about our relationship with God, our closeness, our gradual coming to know God’s will and his plan for salvation.

And while it is natural for us to see things in terms of the present, God’s perspective is that of eternity.

As long as Moses kept his arms raised, Israel had the advantage; when he let his arms fall, the advantage went to Amalek. (Exodus 17:11)