Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Vigil
October 19, 2019
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday.
- It’s a conversation that Jesus introduces with perhaps the most haunting question in the whole Gospel: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” The question seems to be more than rhetorical. Jesus asks it, it seems, because he’s not convinced that when he comes he’s going to find the type of faith he wants to see. The test of faith, he indicates by the parable of the persistent widow, is whether when he comes he will find us persevering in prayer. Prayer is faith in action. If he’s going to find us faithful, he’s going to find us praying — obviously not necessarily on our knees, but seeking to unite our whole day and life, our mind, our heart and our soul to God. If he doesn’t find us praying and living in conscious communion with him, however, it’s likely that he’s not going to find us living by faith.
- And so, through the Gospel parable, Jesus wants to teach us about the “necessity” of “praying always without growing weary.” He wants to help us learn how to “cry out to God day and night.” He wants to train us to live that way so that no matter what time he comes we will be united to the Lord in a prayer not merely of our lips but of our lives.
- Jesus asks the haunting question at the end of the parable because he knows many do not pray like the inopportune woman. Many Catholics don’t persevere in prayer. We’re content on praying “a little,” saying a Hail Mary or two at the beginning or the end of the day. Others would like to pray more but they think they don’t have time to pray, because they’re prioritizing so many other things in life to a life-changing time with God. Others, because of a bad experience or other reasons, stop praying altogether as an ordinary activity of life, only turning to God in times of crisis. This Sunday Jesus will speak to all of us about the persevering faith he wishes to find in our prayer, hoping to open us up to receive his graces precisely so that we can pray in that way.
- But we can ask a prior question: Why does Jesus want us to pray with the type of heroic perseverance he describes? It’s not that he wants to hog all our attention. It’s not that he wants us to ask for something 70 times 7 times as a pointless exercise, especially given that God already knows what we need before we ask. It’s because we live as we pray and in order to help us learn to persevere in life, he wants us to learn first how to persevere in prayer. We’ll see in Sunday’s first reading that when Moses’ arms were lifted in prayer, the Israelites had the upper hand against the Amalekites; but when his hands fell because of fatigue, the Amalekites began to prevail. Likewise, when we persevere in prayer, then we open to receiving God’s strength to confront and overcome the challenges we face each day. When our hearts, however, grow weary and our hands fall, when we either try to do things on our own and lose heart and give up the good fight of faith altogether, that’s when we fall. To persevere faithfully in life we must learn how to persevere faithfully in prayer.
- Jesus tells us in the Gospel this Sunday, “He who endures to the end will be saved.” (Mt 24:13). Life is a marathon, but one in which God wants to run right alongside of us helping and sustaining us along the way. Prayer is the consequential conversation we have along that marathon. Just like a marathon runner, however, if we’re ever going to finish the race to the heavenly Jerusalem, we need to train. We can’t go from barely praying to praying always overnight. We need to make a commitment in spirit but then we have to train our weak flesh. We must grow in prayer. That begins with making the commitment to set aside some fixed times for a one-on-one appointment with the Lord each day, in which we spend time quietly listening to him speak to us and responding to him with faith. The key is to make the appointment and treasure it as the most important appointment of our day if we’re ever going to pray always.
- The Mass is the great persevering prayer of the Church. It began during the Last Supper, continued on Good Friday and has continued all the way down to the present day. It’s one continuous sacrifice, as Eucharistic Prayer III has it, “from the rising of the sun to its setting.” But it’s important that we persevere in praying the Mass and living a Eucharistic life. We should hope that the vast majority of times we come to Mass, it wont’ be a feat of perseverance, but rather a joy and the highlight of our day or week. But on those occasions in which we’re impatient at Mass, it’s an opportunity for us to learn how to persevere in prayer and life.
- When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? This Sunday is a grace-filled opportunity for us to recognize that God will give us all the help we need to respond to his love. He will give us the grace to increase our prayer, to persevere in our prayerful union with Him so that we may persevere in the good fight against evil and for Him. We ask the Lord for his help to pray with living faith, so that when he comes on Sunday, he may find us full of faith, ready to persevere in prayerful union with him through the valleys and mountains of life all the way until, God-willing, we join the eternally persevering prayer of the heavenly Jerusalem. God bless you!
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