POWERFUL PANTIES or PRAYERFUL PERSEVERANCE?

"POWERFUL PANTIES

 or

 PRAYERFUL PERSEVERANCE?"

(a reflection on Luke 18:1-8, the widow and unjust judge)

by: Deacon Paul Rooney

 

I hope that none of you have superstitious notions.  According to a BBC poll just this year, it seems like one in three college kids think it worth giving "lucky underwear" a try, especially just before a college exam!

 If you have ever watched "Track and Field" events in the Olympic games, back in the era of the famous Carl Lewis in the late 1980's, perhaps you may remember the name of an Olympic marathon "hopeful" by the name of Margaret Groos, a girl from Tennessee.  Before she eventually had to withdraw from competitive sports because of a hyperthyroid condition, someone asked her the reason for her early success.  Her answer made it into the "famous quotes" archives.  She said this:

"When I was 15, I had lucky underwear. When that failed, I had a lucky hairdo, then a lucky race number, even lucky race days.  After 15 [more] years, I’ve found the secret to success is simple.  It’s [just] hard work." http://www.quoteswave.com/text-quotes/392817

Perseverance in good actions is always the answer, isn't it?  God gave each one of us certain gifts and skills, and He wants us to use them.  God did NOT say, "Don't forget to go to work today without your Rabbit's foot."  NOR did he say, "Make sure you read your horoscope today, it will guide you."  And He certainly did NOT say, "Don't forget to wear your lucky underwear."  What he did say is found in the First Commandment.

Well, in today's gospel we have a story of another woman who persevered.  However, she did not get her way with the judge because she wore lucky underwear.  Instead, she simply kept asking, and asking, and asking, until finally he gave in to her request for justice.  The story is pretty straight-forward.  If someone like an unjust human judge will give in to persistent pleas for help, don't you think that a just God  will respond to persistent pleas for justice?  Of course He will!

But here is the key: are we willing to be patient and allow God to respond in His own way and in His own time? This requires faith, believing that the Lord hears and will answer all prayers that are in accord with His will.

There is a footnote in the bible [NABRE] which says that persistent prayer is needed to avoid apostasy, and this is a sad truth. We all know someone who has simply stopped going to Mass.  That act of straying from the Sacraments has its roots in the non-existence of a real prayer life. I think we all know what happens when our prayer life becomes lax, or when we find excuses not to take quality time to pray.  Eventually this kind of spiritual sloth expands. When Jesus is not at the center of our daily lives, the virtues become harder to live out, and the vices and occasions of sin seem to crop up much more frequently as the enemy gains a foothold in our life. The deadly danger is the short distance between laxity in prayer and eventual apostasy, which is the complete rejection and repudiation of the Christian faith, by deeds if not by public assertion.

To avoid this deadly path to an inactive spiritual life, we need to heed the gospel message today: be persistent in seeking justice, and be persistent in our prayer life. A great image is presented in the First Reading (Exodus 17:8-13). As long as Moses had his hands raised in intercessory prayer, the battle went well for the Israelites. But when he stopped interceding with prayer, the enemy gained an advantage. And when others joined Moses to help him with the intercession, the battle against the enemy was won.

This is what Our Lady, the Queen of Peace, who continues to appear at Medjugorje since 1981, has been urging upon all Catholics: to pray persistently for peace (she tells us that "there will be no peace without prayer and fasting"), and to pray persistently for our priests to help them in their intercession for us.  She asks us to pray the rosary daily; to fast on bread and water on both Wednesdays and Fridays; to read scripture daily; to attend Mass every Sunday and as often on weekdays as possible; and to go to Confession monthly.

So there is our roadmap, from scripture, from the Mother of God, and from Jesus: persistent intercession, and perseverance in our daily prayer life.  Remember the way our gospel started today, and I quote: "Then [Jesus] told them a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary."  That is the key to victory in spiritual warfare!  All you need to do is use it!  (+)

Deacon Paul Rooney

Mary Our Queen Parish, Omaha

-------------------------

Photo Credits:

Marathoner: http://blog.tamar.com/2010/07/two-years-to-go-and-the-2012-london-olympics-marketing-marathon-starts-now/#.Ul1Qob4o4w0

Judge and Widow: http://www.ocarm.org/pre09/lectio/anno_c/orc29eng.htm

Moses Arms Upraised: http://bibleencyclopedia.com/pictures/Exodus_17_Aaron_and_Hur_raising_Moses'_hands.htm

Queen of Peace: http://deaconjohn1987.blogspot.com/2013/07/mary-tv-july-2-2013-medjugorje-message.html

 

The Interval

I am re-posting this reflection (originally titled "Arise Lord") because today's Gospel is Matthew 15: 21-28 , and also because the first reading tells us of the Israelite's, whose fear of the Lord was not as great as their fear of the inhabitants of the land that God had promised them. Because they did not trust the Lord, because they choose to listen to the voices of men and not God, God created an interval of 40 years for them to wander in the desert.

As I noted in the reflection there is a danger in this interval, a danger that we do not order our desires to God's will.  Yet, today's Psalm says that during that interval, Moses stood in the breach between God and His stiff-necked people. Interceding on their behalf and praying that these Israelites learn to trust and take courage in the Lord, whose mighty power and great love delivered them from Egypt. 

We too are called to intercede for those who have not yet learned to trust in God's power. We also must thank God for those who have stood in the breach on our own behalf.  

I have just finished reading Brave New World, in which a couple of quotes, for some reason, brought to mind Jesus and the Canaanite woman.  Then I came across a poem by T.S. Eliot, and I found myself trying to ponder them all at once; I was groping for a connection between them.  Does anyone else have problems like this?   It is really unsettling, and, from my point of view, distracting.  Why couldn't I calm my mind down? Even my prayer time was cluttered with these thoughts, and it was difficult to persist.  I could not escape these distractions through prayer, they intensified.  Clearly, I was making too much of these things.  I was not able to let them go even for the Lord during prayer.  And He was silent.

Later, when I was busy picking up my house while listening to Mumford and Sons I found that my distractions were following me.  I picked up one of my husbands Popular Science magazines, and while Mumford and while  Awake My Soul was playing in the background, I read that someone, somewhere is working on a face recognition feature for our TVs.  Imagine!!  As soon as your TV recognizes your face it will suggest shows that it knows you like.  No more channel surfing to give you a clue that the TV may be a distraction from things of higher importance.  TV will instantly soothe over all unsettled feelings, and all of your more transcendent “distractions” will fade away.  My "distractions" seemed to be coalescing into something more, and it occurred to me that maybe they were not distractions.  Maybe they were a prayer rising in my heart.

"Awake my soul!  You were made to meet your maker" 

In Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World  the Resident Controller of the Western World explains to young students why they are so lucky to be living in the modern world:

“Stability,” said the controller, “stability.  No civilization without social stability.  No social stability without individual stability.”

The tradeoff for this stability is love.  How it is accomplished is by eliminating families, and by the conditioning of all peoples, beginning at their test-tube conceptions, to be happy only in the certain castes they have been predestined to. Solitude, which can awaken a soul to a yearning for love, is eliminated thru constant socialization, through passionless promiscuity and, when the human soul overcomes even these distractions, there are side-effect free drugs to quell the stirrings of transcendent desire. They are etherized to deep feelings, good or bad, through the instant gratification of all their conditioned desires.

“Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation.”

“Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!  My daughter is tormented by a demon.”  But he did not say a word in answer to her. " 

Right after I read this I re-read the T. S. Eliot poem: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  No wonder the powers-that-be in a Brave New World feel that they must eliminate the interval between desire and its consummation!   Only in the solitude of that interval can the beautiful yearning of the poet, and the lover, be discerned. In this time the desire grows, and the impulse to satisfy it becomes more desperate.  In the pain of that yearning one can realize that he has been living life etherized on a table, or that he has measured out his life in coffee spoons.  One can begin to discern what he truly desires.

Yet, it is a dangerous interval. The pain can provoke rage and despair, addiction and hatred -- instability.  It is worse for us in our post-Christian culture, which gives us so little strength for persevering in virtue, because it gives us so little to believe in.  As we progress in our (seemingly) orderly and safe society, we will need to provide a means to distract individuals from these intervals.  As Prufrock ends, you feel he has given up; to afraid of his own desires to push through the angst, the fear, and the impotency of a culture that loves very little.

“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons."

Ah, but if one perseveres in discernment this interval of solitude can also pierce one’s soul with the awareness that he belongs to Someone who is beyond the vanities of this world, and you have an irreplaceable identity in Him!  The depth or our pain has its fulfillment not in numbing distractions, but in a joy that at present you cannot contain.

Arise Lord, let not the voices of men prevail.

Here again is a dangerous moment, because sometimes when I cry out to God, He is slow to respond. And I have been conditioned to instant gratification! I sometimes feel that I am being ignored.  Like the Canaanite woman in Matthew’s Gospel, sometimes the Lord allows an interval between the professed desire and its consummation:

And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!  My daughter is tormented by a demon.”  But he did not say a word in answer to her.  His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.”  He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  But the woman came and did him homage, saying, Lord, help me.”  He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”  She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”  Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done as you wish.”  Matthew 15:  22-28

But the woman, because of the great love she has for her daughter, perseveres.  She does not refuse to recognize the faults she brings with her, but lays them at His feet as well.  In the interval of time between the plea of the woman for her daughter and Jesus’ final words Jesus has drawn from her tremendous courage, trust and love.  She may have come only for healing of her daughter, but she surely left with a passionate desire for Him.  Her humble faith in Him brings the light of Christ to the dark recesses in her soul and she receives His love and healing in greater abundance, and so does her daughter.   When I hear Jesus say “O Woman”  I hear more than just a pat on the back  or a way-to-go affirmation.  I hear Jesus pouring out his great love for her, because she is now able to receive so much more of it! He has lifted her up in dignity and in her identity by allowing the interval of solitude to increase and refine her desire. What might have happened if she listened to the voices of the men around her?  What might have happened if she never experienced those moments of fear, anger, humiliation?

Arise, Lord, let men not prevail!

In case you may be wondering what Mumford and Sons song I was listening to:

Awake my soul.  For you were made to meet your maker. 

Push through the temptation to let the voices of men distract you from the solitude that reveals the depth of your need, and the intensity of your desire for God.

 

It seemed to sum it all up for me.
Peace and grace,
Heidi

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