After Mass a man in his early 60s, a father of six children, approached me and told me a bit of his story. “My wife died of cancer five years ago. She was such a wonderful wife and mother and I loved her very much. She died two years after the diagnosis. During that time she went through all kinds of treatments, with terrible side effects. From the time she was first diagnosed, until days before she died, our family prayed together for her cure. Jesus said, ‘Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you.’”
The man shrugged and said, “We did what Jesus told us to do. All along we wondered, ‘What is God waiting for? What’s taking so long? Weren’t we good enough? Why did God let this happen to my wife and to my family?’” The man raised questions many of us have also asked. Do only the very good people have access to God? Are the rest of us too imperfect? Too flawed to get a hearing when we desperately need one?
In our lifetimes we have labeled some living persons as saints. One we called “the Saint of the Gutters.” Mother Teresa died September 5, 1997; in 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize. In her lifetime she was called a saint by both believers and atheists. We would think that, of all people, Mother Teresa would know the right way to pray and that her prayers would be on the fast track to God; get a quick hearing and immediate response.
Yet, as we learned from her biography, “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,” a collection of letters she wrote to several confessors over the years, that her prayer life produced no light, no choice moments of ecstasy. Instead she describes silence and emptiness in her prayer and that she had no immediate experience of God. Beneath her constant smile, especially the smile she showed the dying poor of Calcutta, was intense spiritual darkness; a feeling of the absence of God.
That widower who lost his wife, Mother Teresa, and many of us, have something in common. We have prayed and prayed through difficult times, have gotten no immediate comfort or answer. We have suffered all kinds of doubts and been tempted to turn our backs on God because, it felt as if, God had turned a back on us. Perhaps, like Mother Teresa, we wear a happy and brave face before the world, yet we can’t help wondering as we struggle with our doubts.
Jesus was well aware that in our prayer we would get discouraged, especially when we wrestle with hard issues and crises in our lives; not only concerning sickness and family situations, but when we struggle to do what is right and seem to be getting no results. Like the widow in the gospel, we seek to have things put right. After all, aren’t we partners with God in a world that doesn’t always share our views? We want what is fair and just for ourselves and for others. We want God to speak up and do something!
But the world doesn’t always yield to our best efforts to make things right. We try to fight against racism in our homes, school and work. We do what we can to stand up for the rights of the poor and those who get picked on. We want what is just for ourselves and for others. In other words, we keep Jesus in mind; we think his thoughts; we feel what he feels for others.
We take with us today the story of a widow who wanted only what was right to be given to her. The widow in today’s parable could have used someone on her side. She wasn’t asking for special favors or charity. She didn’t want the powerful judge to keep her out of jail or get her a suspended sentence. She wanted what was her due: “Render a just decision for me against my adversary.”
Jesus knew how hard prayer would be for us. He knew that we, like the man whose wife died of cancer, or like the widow in today’s parable, would be tempted to give up. So he wonders aloud: “When the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth?” Would we keep praying through difficult times? Would we keep trusting God in our efforts to do right against, what feels like, insurmountable forces?
God is not like the judge in the parable, someone who has to be worn down by persistent petition. Rather, the parable is presenting a contrast. If even an unjust judge who, “neither feared God nor respected any human being,” would eventually give in and do what was right, how much more is God disposed to “secure the rights of God’s chosen ones who call out to God day and night?” How much more is God on our side, who is the very opposite of a corrupt judge? The preacher needs to be careful not to make it sound like we have to wear God down to receive what we need.
Jesus’ parable doesn’t take away the mystery we all have to live with when we ask: “What is God doing when we are in need? What’s taking God so long to respond?” What we do is what that man did whose wife died and what Mother Teresa kept on doing: we pray and we go through the days still trusting God loves us; still willing to wait for a while for God to show God’s hand.
What is God doing while we pray? God continues to change our hearts and strengthen our faith. Which is what God did for that man whose wife died of cancer. He continues to pray and go to church, even as he lives with his questions. That is what God is doing for us now, answering our prayers: giving us hope that God will never abandon us; will stand with us, so that when Jesus does return he will find faith in us.
2 Timothy is a reflection on the ministry of St. Paul. Paul is imprisoned and writes to Timothy, who was to be Paul’s successor. The letter has the tone of a mentor passing on to his disciple the essentials of the ministry.
Over the years, as a member of the Dominican Order (the Order of Preachers), I have heard the second part of today’s reading proclaimed at our assemblies and seen it printed in our vocation material: “I charge you… proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching” (4:1-2). But this letter isn’t addressed just to church minsters and to the Order of Preachers.
2 Timothy speaks to all of us, particularly in its call to be faithful to what we have learned and believe from the Scriptures. Paul is speaking of the Scriptures of Judaism (the Old Testament). There are some who believe the former Testament is no longer relevant for Christians. Well, not according to Paul.
He also reminds Timothy of those who handed on the faith to him. In our Eucharist today we might give thanks for those who first taught us the faith when we were children, as well as those who continue to model and faithfully preach God’s Word to us.
In the spirit of Paul’s solemn commission, we preachers might also consider preaching from the Hebrew texts, for Paul says, they “are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”