Jesus told his disciples a parable
about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.
The longer we have to wait for something the less we are able to care or get worked up about it. When we first pray for healing we do so with fervor. But years later it is just another item on a list of intentions. We may even continue to mention it but we become weary. We lose heart.
There was a judge in a certain town
who neither feared God nor respected any human being.
This judge would have been easily able to ignore the widow who came to him for justice if she asked with the perfect indifference that often marks our own prayers. However, the attitude of the widow was anything but indifferent. She obviously came before the judge with a fiery desire burning in her eyes.
because this widow keeps bothering me
I shall deliver a just decision for her
lest she finally come and strike me.
God is like the dishonest judge in that he cannot be pressured into doing anything by fear of God, since he is God, nor respect for human beings, since he is no respecter of persons (see Acts 10:34). Yet he is also infinitely different from the judge because he does care about the rights of his chosen ones. It is true that he sometimes seems as if he is slow to answer even when we call out to him day and night.
If God gave virtue an immediate recompense, we should straightway find ourselves engaging in commerce, instead of perfecting ourselves in his service.- From a second century homily quoted in the Liturgy of the Hours.
God saw something admirable in the fighting spirit that the widow brought to her request. When we come to him and he does not give us immediate fulfillment the reason is not to decrease our desire for his promise but to test and grow that desire against adversity. This is one sense of the saying of Jesus that "the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force" (see Matthew 11:12).
We often end our prayers with "if the Lord wills" more as something to hide behind, to spare ourselves disappointment, than as a genuinely pious surrender of our will to him. This is not to say that we should violently insist on our own will over and against that of God. Obviously not! On the other hand, desires which God does inspire, for healing, wholeness, and salvation are things that should not be matters of mere indifference to us. They are worth an attitude in prayer that would make the dishonest judge nervous. Only if we invest ourselves in the desires that we think God wants us to have can we grow in those desires. As we do so, God himself will refine and purify them.
We can be sure that prayers to support people who have set out for the sake of the Name are vital and right. They are accepting nothing from the pagans, because there is nothing a pagan could give them that could help, so our prayers for them are vital. Indeed, anything motivated by the Name is something about which we ought to care deeply, that we may be co-workers in the truth. The widow, by caring about the cause of justice was such a co-worker. And by not backing down her world was changed. May ours be so as well.
Light shines through the darkness for the upright;
he is gracious and merciful and just.
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