PaddlingPadre

Perseverance in prayer. This is certainly a theme in these readings. Moses, with the help of Aaron and Hur holding up his arms, perseveres in prayer as Joshua battles Amalek. And then the widow of this somewhat strange parable perseveres in making her petition to this dishonest and arrogant judge. Certainly then, the lesson for us, that we likewise ought to be persevering in our prayer, is clear enough, for our Lord himself says: Will not God secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them?

But in saying this, we must be on guard against an easy misunderstanding. For while it is true that we should persevere in prayer, we must avoid thinking about this in a magical sort of sense. That is it to say, in considering the steadfast love of God towards those he has chosen, namely ourselves who have been chosen by God in the waters of baptism and by the anointing of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, and in considering the swiftness and certainty with which God will rescue those who unceasingly turn to him, we should not think that it is the mere pestering of our prayers that will move God to act, as if God were like the judge in the parable, and is if the key to getting God to do what we want lay in praying a sufficient number of Hail Marys or asking for some favor X number of times.

No, God will do what he will, and he will indeed rescue those who turn to him. And the value of persevering in prayer, then, is not that God will become annoyed by our pestering and thereby give us what we want so that we will quiet down, but rather the value lies in that, by persevering in prayer, we continually manifest and express our dependence on God, our reliance on him for salvation. To pray unceasingly, then, is to continually reject that temptation towards a false sense of self-dependency, and to re-affirm our relationship to God as being one of familial trust and confidence. In other words, to persevere in prayer is to persevere in faith, and for those who persevere in faith are prepared those heavenly dwellings where we shall share in the divine life, seeing God as he is. And so surely, then, God will indeed secure the rights of his chosen ones who call to him day and night, for those who so call out to him are those faithful souls who, in pouring out their hearts in supplication, thereby manifest a salvific faith.

 This connection between perseverance in prayer and perseverance in faith is perhaps more clearly evident in our reading from Exodus. For if you recall, what is the constant temptation of the Israelites as they wander in the desert? Is it not that they will abandon faith, that they will cease to trust in God who delivered from Pharoah, and instead put their trust in their own wits and capabilities, even to the point of worshiping idols of their own making? And so, what form would that temptation take in the present conflict with Amalek? Would it not to be trust purely in the sword of Joshua, without reference to God, as if the Israelites could on their own achieve victory? Yet in praying as he does, with Aaron and Hur at his side to help him, Moses, and all the Israelites with him, reject this temptation, recognizing instead that just as God alone had freed them from Egypt, so God alone would deliver from the perils of the desert (including the swords of Amalek) and lead them into the promised land. The prayer of Moses, with his arms steadily upraised till sunset, is a physical manifestation of his faith and the faith of Israel.

And so, reflecting on this, we can turn to ourselves and examine our own conduct, our own prayerfulness, our own faithfulness. For we too, like the Israelites in the desert and like the widow in the Christ’s parable, have our difficulties and challenges in this life. And in the face of those challenges (to say nothing of those moments of prosperity where we might also be tempted) we also face the temptation to count on ourselves alone, forgetting that we ultimately depend on God, forgetting that we can’t save ourselves. And so the question we can ask ourselves, as we encounter both the challenges and the blessings of life, is: am I praying? Because if you’re not praying, if you’re not persevering in prayer, then it is, I think, highly doubtful and perhaps even impossible that you are persevering in faith, for how one can trust in God rather in one’s own capacities and resources if one does not turn to God in prayer? For remember, to have faith that saves, to believe in God in any meaningful sense, is not merely to assent to God’s existence or anything so trivial as that, which any pagan could do, but is instead to trust in him, to depend on him, to rely on him rather than on ourselves, for our salvation lies only in God, and we are powerless to save ourselves.

At this point, it might be worthwhile to direct our attention to the Our Father. For if our faithfulness, which is to say our ongoing trust and reliance on God, is manifested by our perseverance in prayer, then we could do no better than to turn towards that prayer that Christ himself taught us, and which therefore gives the model for all Christian prayer, for that prayer in which we must persevere. In other words, to persevere in prayer is to persevere in asking for the coming of God’s kingdom, for the realization of God’s will on earth and in heaven, for the giving of our daily bread, for the forgiveness of our sins, and for deliverance from temptation and evil. These are petitions which encompass both our earthly necessities as well as our heavenly aspirations, and for which rely completely on God.             And so, make this prayer your own. Lean-in to that dependence which it expresses. Persevere in prayer so as to persevere in faith, so that trusting in God, you might be saved by him in whom you trust, who in his faithfulness will not fail to rescue those who, by their prayers, remain faithful.