Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Persistence in Prayer
“…be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient…” (2 Timothy 4:2).
This line from St. Paul feels like the overarching theme for this Sunday’s readings.
If you are like me, it can feel like an insurmountable task to make prayer a habit. Thankfully, we have the saints to turn to for advice!
St. Francis de Sales wrote a guide to personal prayer specifically geared toward laypeople in his book Introduction to the Devout Life. One of the most helpful tips I found from it was to focus on the quality, not the quantity, of your prayers.
“Do not strive to say many words so much as seeking to say a few with your whole heart,” St. Francis de Sales wrote. “One Our Father said devoutly is worth more than many prayers hurried over.”
I think it can be hard to persist in prayer sometimes because we are overwhelmed by the very idea of it before we even begin. We might get it stuck in our head that we have to pray a certain number of Hail Mary’s or hit a quota of Glory Be’s before God actually starts listening and paying attention to our prayer. Not true! These prayers and all of the prayers that the Catholic Church offers us are powerful and beautiful, to be sure, but God wants us to go beyond dry, lifeless recitation of them. He wants us to contemplate and reflect upon the words of these prayers. Even more so, He wants us to engage in personal prayer.
God invites us to communicate directly with Him. Traditional prayers are a good starting point, but God loves hearing our own words. He wants you to have a conversation with Him, just like you would if you called a friend or parent to go over your day and talk about how your week is going, what you’re excited for, or what’s got you worried, concerned, or stressed out.
Prayer is the means of developing a friendship with God. St. Teresa of Ávila, whose feast day we celebrate on October 15, wrote, “Mental prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us” (The Book of Her Life 8:7). Friendship involves appreciation and frequent communication. When I think about prayer like that, it feels more welcoming and approachable.
Prayer can also mean persisting in silence as you listen to God. Sometimes, words are not necessary in prayer. St. John Vianney illustrates this method well from a farmer he saw praying before the tabernacle. Impressed by the farmer’s absorption, St. John asked him one day what he said in prayer. The farmer responded with a twinkle, “He looks at me and I look at Him.” No words, just love.
I believe community is important to persistence in prayer too. Most of us are familiar with Jesus’ instruction to “go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Later in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus also says, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). We definitely need to take some quiet time to be alone with our Lord, but I believe today’s First Reading from the Book of Exodus stresses how important the support of communal prayer is to persistence in our prayer life. As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Joshua and the Israelites had the better of the fight, but when he got tired, they began to lose the battle. Aaron and Hur stepped in and assisted Moses, and Joshua was able to lead the Israelites to victory. Even Moses needed to lean on the support of community to persist in prayer.
A prayer community or prayer partners can be like a gym buddy. They can help keep you accountable and persistent in your prayer life. At St. Francis, we gather as community to grow in and strengthen our spirituality every time we come to Mass. There are also several ministries at our parish that can keep us persistent in prayer. Small Church Communities, the Moms Ministry, the Young Adult Ministry…the list goes on and on (just look at page 9 of the bulletin).
We should never feel like our persistence in prayer comes across to God as nagging. God is NOT like the judge in Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel. The key is the judge being described as dishonest. Jesus is asking us to consider that even if the unjust judge responds to the persistence of the widow, how much more so will God, the just judge, listen to our prayers? God wants us to be like the persistent widow in the parable!
Jesus notes at the end of the Gospel how easy it can be for us to lose heart in our prayer life. “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).
As with exercise and fitness, it’s inevitable that we may hit a wall in our prayer life. St. Teresa of Ávila writes, “Prayer is an exercise of love, [but] one needs no bodily strength for mental prayer but only love and the formation of a habit” (The Book of Her Life 7:12). If prayer ever becomes tedious or even boring for us because nothing seems to happen, we must persist. Again, St. Teresa of Ávila encourages us, “We must have a determined determination to never give up prayer” (The Way of Perfection 21:2).
Let’s work on taking small steps each day this week to make prayer a habit. Like the saying goes, “Persistence pays off!”