Fe and prayer

When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on earth?

Jesus gives us a lesson on how Christian prayer should be: with confidence, as the woman believes that if she continues to ask the judge, she will receive the answer to her request. With perseverance, the woman never stops insisting, and finally, with the things that are necessary for our salvation. The woman was asking for something just. After teaching this, Jesus shows us that prayer should be made with confidence, with persistence, and for the things that are necessary for our salvation. Jesus came with a warning: When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?

Our Lord reveals the relationship between faith and prayer. At one point, a journalist asked a bishop, "What do you tell a priest who no longer wants to continue and wants to leave the ministry?"

The bishop replied, "I ask them: when did you stop praying?" This is the heart of the matter—if you stop praying, you are lost. When a predator wants to catch a pigeon, the first thing it does is silence the bird's cries so that the mother doesn't know it’s in danger.

Similarly, when someone wants to do wrong, they often say, "Do not tell your parents..."

Evil works in the same way—it tries to silence our crying’s to God; our prayer life, leading us away from God.

Many people fail to pray because they have never learned how. They think that prayer is an emotion, but it is not an emotion or a feeling; it is a request of love, even when we don't feel okay.

Give at least 15 minutes in the morning to God for mental prayer. Ask forgiveness for your failings, present all your worries to Him, make a resolution to practice the virtues, and ask Him, like the widow, to free you from the oppression of sin, which is our greatest enemy.

In order to pray, let us believe; and for our faith not to weaken, let us pray. Faith causes prayer to grow, and when prayer grows, our faith is strengthened (Sermon 115).

He who prays is certainly saved. He who does not pray is certainly damned. All the blessed (except infants) have been saved by prayer. All the damned have been lost through not praying; if they had prayed, they would not have been lost. And this will be their greatest torment in hell—thinking how easily they might have been saved, just by asking God for His grace. But now it is too late. The time for prayer is over.