In yesterday’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us how to pray and gives us the “Our Father” prayer. It is an invitation for us to enter into a more intimate relationship with our Father in heaven through prayer. The words of the “Our Father” prayer embody Jesus’s Great Commandment to love God and our neighbor, as well as his teachings on the Beatitudes, asking God for “our daily bread”, helping us to “forgive” as He forgives us, and delivering us from the snares of the Devil. When we pray the “Our Father”, we are reminded of how much God loves us and, like a good Father, we are given a roadmap on how to live our lives in a way that would transform our hearts to be like Jesus’ Sacred Heart, to be imitators of Christ for the salvation of our souls and the souls entrusted to our care.
Now, in today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us to be persistent in our prayer life. Persistence is something that we all should know well because we are taught that persistence leads to success in life. I saw this meme once that said: “Persistence [is the] virtue of never giving up.” My family and I lived in Wallingford, CT when I was in grades 3 through 5, and I remember having to go door-to-door in my neighborhood to sell products for a school fundraiser every year. I wanted to sell a certain amount of products to get a prize and that was my motivation to persist in my efforts. Now, I probably would not be knocking on someone’s door at midnight, like the man in today’s Gospel, but I would have given it my best effort and not give up until I had reached my goal. We are persistent in almost every aspect of our lives - careers, studies, friendships, relationships, etc. - and, yet, when it comes to our relationship with God and our prayer life and spirituality, we often give up too quickly when we feel that God is not answering our prayers.
We forget that God will answer our prayers according to His will and His time and not our will and our time. We forget these words of the “Our Father” prayer: “. . .thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. . .” Jesus promises that our Father hears our prayers and will answer them, saying: “And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” However, according to His will, not ours; His time, not ours. Therefore, let us be persistent in prayer, not only in words but in how we live our lives, as Saint Basil the Great tells us:
“Prayer is a request for what is good, offered by the devout of God. But we do not restrict this request simply to what is stated in words. . . We should not express our prayer merely in syllables, but the power of prayer should be expressed in the moral attitude of our soul and in the virtuous actions that extend throughout our life… This is how you pray continually - not by offering prayer in words, but by joining yourself to God through your whole way of life, so that your life becomes one continuous and uninterrupted prayer.”
And this is our “reward” for persisting in prayer - thus says the Lord : “I will have compassion on them, as a man has compassion on his son who serves him. . . for you who fear my name, there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays.”
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