29th Sunday of ordinary time

We remember in prayer the people of Creeslough in Donegal who have lost loved ones and we also pray for all those who are showing the compassion of a caring community to them at this sad time. Long after the TV cameras and the worlds media have left Creeslough the words of young Hamish O’Flaherty at his fathers funeral will be remembered he said “We should be grateful for our families. Cherish them. Be grateful because they won’t be there forever so use up the time you have wisely,” “Be grateful for your own life, because that too will not last forever, For you will be able to rest after your hard work. “Be grateful that God has given us this life and the times in it, our families our friends and our home and this world that is awash with hope and love that God has given us.” There in these few words is a great lesson for all of us .

In our Gospel for this Sunday Jesus tells us about our need to pray and not to lose heart when we don’t get what we pray for straight away.Over a long period of time many people have prayed for various things for example family concerns for healing of body mind or spirit or whatever. We  often pray for things and don’t get them straight away but we get the things we pray for when we really need them. Remember No great work can ever be achieved without long and patient effort and this is the same for us in our prayer lives. The work of patient persistent prayer will yield results as God helps us to get through all our problems large and small. Remember the saying that nothing is impossible for those who have faith and if our faith is the size of mustard seed it can move mountains.  Like one of the ten lepers in last weeks gospel, we ask, and then when our prayers are answered, we return in order to  thank God. When we meet the judge and the widow in this Gospel passage we meet them at a crisis point. We have no case history for the widow but we do for the judge. He is a hard man who isn’t influenced by religious principle or by public opinion. Both justice and compassion are absent from his dealings with the widow.She has no influential friends to bring pressure on the judge and she has no money to bribe him: all she has is the justice of her cause and her own persistence. Jesus encourages us to be persistent in our prayer and never lose heart.

We have to invest in our faith  and prayer will help us to do this. Through this parable, Jesus teaches us the need for perseverance in prayer. This perseverance develops our trust and confidence in God. It helps us realize how weak we are when left to ourselves. It keeps us close to God, as we learn how dependent we are on His generous love. Let us  pray for what we need, but above all let us pray that we will lead a life filled with faith in God as we go forward in Faith..