The theme of our 29th Sunday whose readings are Exodus 17:8-13; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14, 4:2; Luke 18:1-8 speaks of the problem of prayer in our post modern situation.

In our world so full of different activities, is it not better perhaps to take advantage of our time and get things done? Shall we continue to find time and go on our knees in prayer?  This seems to have been the preoccupations of many great minds.

One of them Abraham Lincoln meditated a lot on the question of prayer and found it to be absolutely necessary in his daily life. He is widely quoted to have said: "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go.” 

In his work  Les Misérables, Victor Hugo tells us that it is within man’s nature to pray to his or her God whether he or she is aware or not. He says: Certain thoughts are prayers. 

There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
In the first reading we are informed that prayer was a central experience of the Israelites’ community. Their victory occurred when Moses had his hands raised up in prayer. Their salvation came directly from the Lord.

This has been part of their history as is the case in the plagues that obtained Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt, the destruction of the Egyptian army when they tried to overtake Israel in the crossing of the Red Sea, the defeat of the Amalekites, the list is long! 

The same people knew that on the contrary, when they wanted to be more rationalistic and relied on treaties with powerful nations instead of God’s promises, their defeat was always imminent. For them as their history proved, prayer is part of their success.

In the Gospel Jesus speaks of the problem of prayer in a ‘down to earth’ way. He is conscious of the tendency of believers to pray just a minimum, soon giving up if there are no immediate results. Thus, he employs his imagination, as he does so marvellously on many occasions, and comes up with a parable that teaches the lesson "about the need to pray continually and never lose heart.” He presents the worst case scenario of an unjust judge, from whom a poor, helpless widow needs to obtain a favour. 

Although the woman has little to no chance of obtaining what she desires, because of her unremitting petitions, and not because of the content of her plea, she obtains justice.

Then Jesus asks: If this works in the case of the parable, how much more should it work in the "best case” scenario, in which it is God, our Father, responding to the prayers of his chosen ones?

The lesson that Jesus drives home in the above parable is the power of the persistent prayer. In the case of the poor woman, her determination is obvious. The Bible speaks of her continual coming to the judge for help everyday.

Wherever the judge went, be it in the court, in the marketplace, there the woman was, asking him to come to her help. And at last the judge says ‘Even if I do not fear God and have no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps causing me trouble, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming to disturb.’

It is amazing to note that the widow’s experience is not totally foreign to our own present day experience. For us too, there may be times when we are burdened down with cares, worries, fears and troubles. During those times, it may seem that every circumstance of life is stacked against us.

There may be the temptation to say, "What’s the use of going on with prayer? This may happen after we have prayed for long and apparently in vain. The poor woman in the parable teaches us a lesson, that in prayer we cannot quit because persistence in prayer pays off in God’s time!

And that is what Jesus is teaching us; to keep praying, despite all the obstacles we may face and the discouragements to give up.

What is more evident to us today, is that if we really want to orient our temporal activities towards what is eternal and everlasting, we must lead a life of prayer.  As Paul tells the Thessalonians (1,5-7), we must pray and do so constantly! According to Martyn Lloyd-Jones, this might not be so difficult since within our selves we already do have different impulses to pray: Always respond to every impulse to pray.

The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this – always obey such an impulse. When it comes to the necessity of prayer, not even the devil doubts it as Guy H. King puts it beautifully: No one is a firmer believer in the power of prayer than the devil; not that he practices it, but he suffers from it. 

Ends