Praying with Persistence

The 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

You may remember the famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead. One of her many husbands, who was also an anthropologist, observed that the natives on his little South Pacific island prayed very hard over their yam gardens after planting them.

“Very interesting,” he thought. “Poor superstitious people. They think that prayer can actually make their gardens produce more!” So he chuckled to himself about how naïve and gullible they were.

But then, he remembered that he was a scientist and that, in principle, he ought to try some kind of controlled experiment before he wrote off the natives as ignorant savages. So he decided that he would plant his own yam gardens in two spots that seemed exactly the same in style and sunlight. He also resolved to tend each of the gardens with equal care. Then he would pray over one but not the other.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know any prayers. But he did have a Hebrew Bible with him. He didn’t understand Hebrew, but he could pronounce the words from going to Hebrew school as a boy. So he read a couple of passages each day from the Bible over one of the gardens. He later admitted that he probably gave a little extra care to the garden without the prayer, because he really didn’t want the prayer to work.

But it did! He had no idea what to make of the outcome of his experiment and repeated it several times. Each time the prayer worked.

To a large extent, we are all gardeners. We may not be raising yams, but we could be raising children… or nurturing a career… or cultivating a relationship… or trying to get some other seeds in our life to sprout. No matter what our gardens are growing, if we want to give them an extra-special edge and make them as productive as possible—our number one job is to pray with persistence. Why? Because it works.

When we get all caught up in the busy-work of our gardening, sometimes it’s easy to forget about the praying part. That’s why we can use a reminder from time to time.

That’s why Jesus tells a parable today about “the necessity to pray always without becoming weary” (Lk 18:1). He gives the example of a widow who comes before a judge looking for justice. She lacks the kind of leverage that she needs to take care of things on her own—looks, money, power, a husband. The only resource she has is her persistence. We don’t know if she was patient, but there’s no indication that she threatened the judge or even her opponent. There is nothing about weapons, lawyers, or a mob of angry widows trying to force the judge to act quickly and in her favor. She seeks justice, not revenge or retribution. In this parable, Jesus tells us that when we pray, we should imitate her.

The judge in the story relented, not because he was so good, but because she wouldn’t give up. Her persistence paid off.

But doesn’t it almost seems silly or insulting to nag God for the things we need and want? After all, God knows everything. So why do we need to pester him with all our requests? Let me propose two reasons.

The first reason is simply because Jesus has told us to. “Ask and you shall receive… Knock and the door shall be opened” (Mt 7:7). He even gives us as our model this person who drives a public official crazy by her nagging. God evidently has a tender spot for souls like these.

The second reason is that from God’s viewpoint, our prayers have an impact on both us and the world. Let me give you an example. I could say, “God knows I need salt on my french fries to enjoy them, so why bother picking up the salt shaker? Can’t I just pray for salt?” But nobody says that, because we know we have to do our part to get results. The same is true of prayer. When we pray, we are cooperating with God to make good things happen in the world.

That’s why we’ve got to pray constantly, and we have to spread out our prayer—just like we do with many things in our life. Nobody decides that they’re going to eat a giant quantity of food on Monday and then not have to eat for the rest of the week. We don’t take ten deep breaths and say, “Good! That’s over for a while. Now I don’t have to breathe for a couple of hours.”

No, prayer must become like eating and breathing. It must permeate our life and our time. In a way, prayer becomes our life, and God who loves us so, wants to give us every good gift—especially those things we pray for. As Our Lord has said, “Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours” (Mk 11:24).

Sometimes, we may look around our world and think that despite the persistence of many holy people, God has not answered some very important prayers. After all, where’s peace in the Middle East? Why hasn’t hunger been eradicated? Why do so many people keep suffering from terrible diseases?

Actually, God is quite persistent, too. Without ceasing, he is moving us forward, upward, toward truth and goodness. It may not always seem that way. We can be stubborn and even evil, especially when we act out of fear and lack of faith, but the march of God’s creative power continues. Even death can’t stop it—not the death of a Savior sent by God, not the death of so many of his precious children. Yes, God is persistent in just the same way that Jesus says we should be.

What’s more, God is always and continually at work among us. We can see it if we look. Sometimes the worst of times are when people pull together to do their greatest work. God sees the good in us, even when we would deny justice to one another. Like the widow in the parable, in the end, we will be vindicated.

I pray that we’ll all take to heart today’s beautiful lesson to hang in there with joyful hope and keep praying, always and everywhere.