Faithful Perseverance in Prayer, Life and Faith, 27th Thursday (II), October 10, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
IESE Business School, New York City
Leonine Forum New York City Chapter
October 10, 2024
Gal 3:1-5, Lk 1:69-75, Lk 11:5-13

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he began by teaching them that the secret of prayer is to approach God as a loving Father. Once we do, almost everything flows. We begin to seek the glory and sanctification of his name, the building of his kingdom and the doing of his will not only because we love Him but also because we know that, as his sons and daughters, we share that name, are heirs of that kingdom, and his will is to help us to become saints. Once we relate to him as a Loving Father than we trust in his providence to give us each day what we need and in his mercy to forgive us when we err because he loves us more than he detests the sins that hurt us and wound our relationship with him. When we relate to him as a Loving Father we trust him not to put us in a position in which we’ll fail the ultimate test but to challenge us and help us to meet those challenges that are beyond what we think are possible.
• Today Jesus continues his responding to our request to teach us how to pray by illustrating for us how to persevere in prayer. He gives us a parable based on middle eastern customs of hospitality. Especially during the summer months when the sun is most brutal, many Jews would travel at night and so it was not unheard of that a guest would arrive at your home — in the days before not only phones, texts and emails but also before a postal system that was affordable and efficient — unannounced at night, famished after a long journey. Because bread was baked normally in the morning, it’s possible that all the bread had already been eaten. That’s why you’d go to your neighbors to ask if they had anything to share. The second thing to understand about middle eastern culture is that their doors were open all day long but when they were shut and locked, that meant that the entire family and all their animals had gone to bed. They’d sleep together in an interior part of the house to stay warm during the typical middle eastern radiational cooling at night. To get up to answer the door when a neighbor was knocking at midnight meant that one would likely be stepping on one’s children, one’s animals and waking everyone up. It’s understandable that one would want to wait to share bread until the morning. But Jesus says that because of the perseverance of the neighbor, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” Jesus mentions this as a lesson in prayer precisely in order to contrast that motivation with one of God. He was saying, “If a neighbor would eventually give in because of harassment, think about how God will respond out of love?” That led Jesus to say, “I tell you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks the door will be opened.” Notice that he doesn’t say that one will receive, find or have the door opened immediately. He also doesn’t say that one will receive and find exactly what one expected to find. But he does promise God will respond, precisely because God is a loving Father who always responds first and foremost by giving himself. That’s why Jesus said, “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” God sends the Holy Spirit not just to those who ask for the Holy Spirit but for those who ask, seek, or knock for anything, and he does so precisely because he loves us and provides what we really need beyond what we desire or explicitly request.
• The question we need to ask and answer, however, is: Why doesn’t God answer our prayers immediately if he loves us? Why does he want us to persevere in knocking like the neighbor for bread? Why does he want us to spend hours, days, months even years seeking in order to find? He does so precisely so that we may learn how to persevere in life. Pope Francis asked in an Angelus meditation several years ago why God wants us to pray with perseverance. “Why does God want this? Doesn’t he already know what we need? … This is a good question that makes us examine an important aspect of the faith: God invites us to pray insistently not because he is unaware of our needs or because he is not listening to us. On the contrary, he is always listening and he knows everything about us lovingly.” But because we pray as we live and live as we pray, he wants to develop in us through prayer the type of perseverance we need to remain faithful in life. “On our daily journey, especially in times of difficulty, in the battle against the evil that is outside and within us,” Pope Francis continued, “the Lord is not far away, he is by our side. We battle with him beside us, and our weapon is prayer which makes us feel his presence beside us, his mercy and also his help. But the battle against evil is a long and hard one; it requires patience and endurance. … Indeed persevering prayer is the expression of faith in a God who calls us to fight with him every day and at every moment in order to conquer evil with good.” Persevering prayer helps us to learn the persevering faith we have to have to fight the good fight so as to win.
• We see the importance of this virtue of faithful perseverance in today’s first reading, when St. Paul sternly corrects the Christians in Galatia for their lack of endurance in the life according to the Holy Spirit to which Paul introduced them. They had instead gone over to a false gospel that taught that they would be saved not by grace, not by God, not by faithful response to God’s help, but rather by their own participation in the Jewish “works of the law” such as circumcision, dietary practices and the like. St. Paul didn’t mince words when he said, “O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you — literally given you the evil eye — before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Did they not realize, he was saying, that they were saved by what Christ accomplished on the Cross? ” I want to learn only this from you,” he continued. “Did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? … Does, then, the one who supplies the Spirit to you and works mighty deeds among you do so from works of the law or from faith in what you heard?” They had failed to live according to God, beseeching his help in prayer, receiving the Holy Spirit he always sends, counting on the graces Christ won for us on Calvary. Instead they began to focus on their own works. Sometimes we’re as “stupid” as the Galatians, but Paul wants to give us the wisdom that he received from his faithfully persevering dependence on God in prayer and in life. And he wants us to imitate that faithful endurance.
• Tonight at the Leonine Forum as we ponder the role of faith and reason in understanding and living Catholic Social Teaching, we recall that many who once believed in Church teaching in a variety of areas do not persevere. They go over to “another Gospel,” whether that’s the “pseudo-Gospel” of might-makes-right, or of the sexual revolution, or of the technocratic paradigm that everything we can do we ethically can do, or of consumerism, or of environmental worship over stewardship, or of nationalism (in contrast to authentic patriotism). It’s key for us perseveringly to use the gift of both reason and revelation to grow stronger in faith so that not only we might grow stronger in faith and help others continue to grow in faith and wisdom as well.
• Tonight at Mass, we ask, we seek, we knock and we open ourselves to the manifold ways God responds, as God the Father prepares to send us both his Son as well as the Holy Spirit in response to the constant petitions of the Church at Mass. We ask him likewise to grant us the graces of perseverance in faith, in reason, in prayer, and in the moral life so that we might believe, announce, enflesh and share the fruits of Catholic social teaching in an age that in many ways have gone over to another Gospel than the one Christ has given us, so that they might believe in again.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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