The Faith Jesus Wants to Find in Us When He Comes, 32nd Saturday (II), November 17, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Kilian Church, Farmingdale, NY
Saturday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Hungary
November 17, 2018
3 Jn 5-8, Ps 112, Lk 18:1-8

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today Jesus asks us what I think is perhaps the most haunting question in Sacred Scripture: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” It’s not a rhetorical question. He was asking it because the answer wasn’t obvious. He had a serious concern as to whether when he comes for each of us or for all of us, whichever comes first, he would find us truly faithful. He’s been giving us over the past couple of weeks lots of encouragement to be found vigilant upon his arrival, like that faithful and prudent steward giving his goods to others at the proper time. Today we can ponder two ways that he hopes to find us faithful.
• The first is through persevering prayer. Jesus gives us a parable about the “necessity” — not the invitation! — for us to “pray always without becoming weary.” Prayer is faith in action. Jesus describes a widow, someone who was helpless without a husband or a son to plead her case before a corrupt judge, who continued to seek a just decision against an adversary. It would appear that the judge may have been bought off by that adversary. The judge, who feared neither what God or what others thought of him, was unwilling but the woman didn’t stop. But eventually he relented, saying, “Because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.” Jesus tells us, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says.” Then he adds, “Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.” Jesus wasn’t comparing God to a corrupt magistrate but contrasting him. If even an unjust judge would eventually give in, how much more will a Father who loves his children respond to them when they “pray always without losing heart?”
• Pope Francis pondered the reality of this persevering prayer in a homily in 2013. The first thing he said is that we need to be willing to pray in such an enduring way as to “bother God.” He said, “Jesus himself, when he taught his disciples how to pray, told them to pray like … the widow with the corrupt judge. To do so — I would say — by being bothersome. I don’t know, perhaps this sounds rather bad, but praying is a little like bothering God so that he listens to us. …  This is how Jesus teaches us to pray.” We generally bring our requests to the Lord “one, two or three times, but without great strength, and then I tire of asking and I forget to ask. … Jesus tell us: ‘Ask!’ and he also says: ‘Knock at the door!’ and whoever knocks at the door makes noise, he disturbs, he bothers.” In another 2013 homily he took up the very important question as to why Jesus would want us to persevere in prayer, asking over and over again, if God already knows what we need. He said, “Jesus tells a parable on the need to pray always, never wearying. The main character is a widow whose insistent pleading with a dishonest judge succeeds in obtaining justice from him. … ‘Crying day and night’ to God! This image of prayer is striking, but let us ask ourselves: Why does God want this? Doesn’t he already know what we need? What does it mean to ‘insist’ with God? … 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. On our daily journey, especially in times of difficulty, in the battle against the evil that is outside and within us, 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, like Moses who had to keep his arms outstretched for the people to prevail (cf Ex 17:8-13). This is how it is: there is a battle to be waged each day, but God is our ally, faith in him is our strength and prayer is the expression of this faith. Therefore Jesus assures us of the victory, but at the end he asks: ‘When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?’ (Lk 18:8). If faith is snuffed out, prayer is snuffed out, and we walk in the dark. We become lost on the path of life. Therefore, let us learn from the widow of the Gospel to pray always without growing weary. … Pray always, but not in order to convince the Lord by dint of words! He knows our needs better than we do! 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.”
• In other words, Jesus wants us to pray with the persevering insistence of the widow so that we might grow in faith and persevere in the battle of faith our entire life long. Just think about how Saint Monica grew in holiness through her persevering prayer for her husband Patricius, her mother-in-law and her son Saint Augustine. Perseverance in prayer trains us for perseverance in life. When Jesus comes, he wants to find faith in us through the expression of faith in action that is prayer.
• The second expression of persevering faith Jesus hopes to find is with regard to charity. Today we encounter for the only time in the Church’s two year liturgical daily Mass readings a portion from St. John’s very short third letter. In it, St. John is praising the recipients of the letter for the way their faith has overflowed in acts of love. St. Paul said that what God wants in us is an operative charity, “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6) and that’s precisely what St. John was praising. He said, “Beloved, you are faithful in all you do for the brothers and sisters, especially for strangers. They have testified to your love before the Church.” Their faithfulness was shown in the charity especially to strangers. St. John called them to persevere in helping the others persevere in faith in the midst of a context in which the pagans were mocking them and trying to get them to leave the Christian faith: “Please help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey. For they have set out for the sake of the Name and are accepting nothing from the pagans. Therefore, we ought to support such persons, so that we may be co-workers in the truth.” All of us are supposed to be “coworkers in the truth,” working together to inspire each other by our own seeking the truth, our living the truth and our teaching the truth so that when the Lord appears, we may all be found persevering in faith.
• Someone who was found in life and at the Lord’s return with faith in action both through prayer and charity was St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) whose feast the Church celebrates today. She was the daughter of the King of Hungary and when she was four she was betrothed to Louis, the son of the Landgrave of Thuringia. She was raised with him for the next 10 years until the marriage, when she was 14 and he 21. Louis always supported St. Elizabeth’s prayerful piety and ardent charity. In the opening prayer of the Mass, we noted that by God’s grace, Elizabeth was able to “recognize and revere Christ in her neighbor,” and because of that capacity to see and to love Jesus with passion even in the midst of the most distressing disguises, she is truly one of the most outstanding examples of charity in history. During a severe famine, she exhausted her treasure and distributed all her own store of corn to the poor. She built a hospital at the foot of the tall, rocky promontory on which the Wartburg Castle was built so that the infirm and weak wouldn’t have to climb it. She fed them with her own hands — as well as 900 others every day — made their beds and cared for them in so many other ways. She provided for orphans and helpless children. When many criticized her material benefactions as being excessive, her husband said that her charities would bring upon the whole realm divine blessings. But even he reached his limit once when Elizabeth brought a leper to the castle and had him sleep in their protected quarters as a type of quarantine. He rushed into the bedroom to drag away all of the bedclothes and other things that might carry the dreaded disease, but as he was doing so, he recognized that the leper had stigmata. Through his wife, he learned to recognize and revere Christ, to see and love him, in his neighbor, including the most revolting. She wants to help us to learn the same, as we like vultures around corpses always seek out and find Christ in the hungry, thirst, naked, stranger, ill, imprisoned and otherwise poor and in need.
• Her spiritual director, St. Conrad of Magdeburg, wrote about her charity and prayer in a letter that the Church ponders today in the Office of Readings, “She was a lifelong friend of the poor and gave herself entirely to relieving the hungry. She ordered that one of her castles should be converted into a hospital in which she gathered many of the weak and feeble. She generously gave alms to all who were in need, not only in that place but in all the territories of her husband’s empire. She spent all her own revenue from her husband’s four principalities, and finally she sold her luxurious possessions and rich clothes for the sake of the poor. Twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, Elizabeth went to visit the sick. She personally cared for those who were particularly repulsive; to some she gave food, to others clothing; some she carried on her own shoulders, and performed many other kindly services. Her husband, of happy memory, gladly approved of these charitable works. Finally, when her husband died, she sought the highest perfection; filled with tears, she implored me to let her beg for alms from door to door. On Good Friday of that year, … she voluntarily renounced all worldly display and everything that our Savior in the gospel advises us to abandon. … Here in the town she built a hospice where she gathered together the weak and the feeble. There she attended the most wretched and contemptible at her own table. Apart from those active good works, I declare before God that I have seldom seen a more contemplative woman. When she was coming from private prayer, some religious men and women often saw her face shining marvelously and light coming from her eyes like the rays of the sun. Before her death … I asked what should be done about her goods and possessions, she replied that anything which seemed to be hers belonged to the poor. She asked me to distribute everything except one worn out dress in which she wished to be buried.” Today we ask for a double portion of her faith-filled prayer and charity.
• The greatest example of persevering prayer, and the greatest means to help us to learn how to be faithful, is the Mass. In Eucharistic Prayer III, we say to the Lord that we offer this prayer of Christ in the Upper Room “from the rising of the sun to its setting.” This is the prayer of the Church that never ceases. It is through the Mass that we are strengthened to pray like the importune widow.  It’s through the Mass that we are strengthened from within to “do this” in memory of Christ and make his self-giving charity the standard of our life. Today, through the intercession of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, we beg the Lord for the grace to help us to persevere in prayer, study and charity in such a way that when he comes he will find us faithful and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: