29 Sunday Year C

LESSON: God Likes Confident Prayer (Homily from ePrist.com)

Today, Jesus is politely telling us that we are weak pray-ers. But he also gives us the remedy for our weakness.

This parable comes after a conversation he had with some Pharisees.In that conversation, they asked him when the Kingdom of God would finally come.Jesus probably detected impatience behind that question, as if they were criticizing God for being careless or lazy.

We can relate to that kind of impatience.

We can tend to give up on God too easily.We approach God with less confidence than this determined widow had in approaching a crooked judge.Behind the words of our prayer lurks a subtle tendency to doubt God.We think that just because he doesn't answer us in the way we expect him to, he isn't answering us at all.

That shows a lack of faith, a truncated vision of God.

Today Jesus is reminding us that we should have unlimited faith and confidence in God.

No prayer that we utter goes unheard.God is never out of his office; he's never on vacation.He is longing for us to bombard him with our prayers.He is eagerly searching for hearts that trust him enough to ask him unceasingly for everything they need.He always answers our prayers, even when the answer is "no".

Because God is our Father, all-wise, all-loving, and all-powerful, there should be no limit to our confidence in him.

And so, as St Luke tells us, we should "pray always without becoming weary."

Being constant in our prayer, just like the widow with her petitions to the judge, just like Moses interceding for victory in the battle against the Amalekites:constant in thanksgiving, constant in repentance, constant in praise, and constant in bringing to God every need that comes our way.Constancy built on confidence - that's the path to becoming better pray-ers.

ILLUSTRATION: Spoiled Children and St Augustine's Sack

Sometimes our lack of confidence in God comes from not understanding why he sometimes delays answering our prayers.

Why does he delay?

If God doesn't answer our prayers right away, it's because he knows we need to keep asking.

He doesn't want us to become spoiled children.

Spoiled children get everything they ask for right when they ask for it.

And as a result, they don't value anything they get.

Human nature tends to value what it has to work for.

This also applies to our spiritual life.

God wants to give us spiritual gifts, lasting, transforming, eternally valuable spiritual gifts, but he won't give them to us until we are ready to receive them.And sometimes, getting ready means growing in the awareness of our need for God's help.And there's no better way to do that than to have God delay in giving us what we ask for.In other words, the more we pray for what we need, the humbler we become, and the humbler we become, the more spiritual gifts God can pour into our hearts.

St Augustine explained it like this:

Suppose you want to fill some sort of bag, and you know the bulk of what you will be given, you stretch the bag or the sack or the skin or whatever it is.You know how big the object that you want to put in is, and you see that the bag is narrow, so you increase its capacity by stretching it.In the same way, by delaying the fulfillment of desire God stretches it, by making us desire, he expands the soul, and by this expansion he increases its capacity.

ILLUSTRATION: St Monica's Tears

St Monica is one of history's most famous pray-ers - the perfect example of consistent and confident prayer.

Her son, St Augustine, was a brilliant student with a promising future among the intellectuals of the Roman Empire.She had tried to bring him up in the Christian faith, but when Augustine came of age, he informed his mother that he had become a Manichean - this was one of the pagan philosophical religions that were anti-Christian.The news devastated her. It seemed that her oldest son was a spiritual lost cause.But she didn't give up on him yet.She spared no efforts to save him, taking him to meet with eminent theologians, arguing with him herself, disciplining him by taking away family privileges, and always, day after day, year after year, praying for him.Many times she spent entire nights in prayer. And when she did allow herself a few hours of rest, she cried herself to sleep.But nothing seemed to help.Only after ten years of darkness, frustration, and unceasing prayer was her prayer answered: her son came back to the Church and became one of history's holiest and most influential saints.Actually, every one of her prayers before then had been answered as well. God was saying, "Not yet."

This experience taught St Augustine confidence and constancy in prayer.

He summarizes this lesson later, while writing about leaving home.He left in secret, so that his mother wouldn't go with him. She didn't want him to go, for fear of the pagan influences he would encounter.

Reflecting on that incident, he wrote:

"That night I stole away without her; she remained praying and weeping."And what was she praying for, O my God, with all those tears, but that you should not allow me to sail!"But you saw deeper and granted the essential part of her prayer: you did not do what she was at that moment asking, that you might do the thing she was always asking."

APPLICATION: Three Prayer Meals a Day

One way to grow in this confidence is to make what spiritual writers call prayer commitments.

These consist of a program of prayer that you commit to carrying out on a regular basis.

This is how we grow up in the spiritual life.If we only pray when we feel like it, or when we are facing a crisis, we will never be constant in prayer - our prayer will depend on our mood.But then we will never develop that mature confidence in God that makes us spiritually strong, wise, and solid.We will remain spiritual infants - crying when we want something, and oblivious to God when we don't.

An easy way to start is by committing to "three prayer meals" a day:

Spend five or ten minutes in prayer before your day gets going - before you leave your room.Then take five minutes with God in the middle of your day, before or after your lunch break - you can always find a quiet place to do this, even if it's in the library or the parking lot.Then, before crawling into bed, spend five more minutes with God, thanking him for the day's blessings and entrusting to him everyone you care about.

During these times you can:

pray prayers from a prayer book or the back of a missal,or reflect on a passage from the Bible,or simply speak to God in your own words,or pray a decade of the Rosary....[Here you can make reference to your favorite resources, or even have some resources available in the narthex. We recommend the free online prayer book at www.vocation.com for its practicality, simplicity, and substance. For a daily Christian meditation, we recommend the "daily meditation" based on the Gospel passage from the daily liturgy, available for free at www.regnumchristi.com.]

Unlike the crooked judge in the parable, God actually wants to guide us to the fullness of life in him.

But he refuses to do it with our cooperation - he won't force himself on us, just as today he will only come to us in Holy Communion through the willing cooperation of the priest during the words of Consecration.

This week, let's show Jesus that we really do want to do our part - nothing will please him more.