October 16, 2022 - Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Perhaps we’ve all heard the expression, “Practice makes perfect!” Yet to keep persevering at anything doesn’t seem to be high on our list of cultural values. We live in a culture that often wants immediate results expecting fast food and instant communication. All the readings from God’s Word to us this weekend stress the importance of perseverance (hanging in there) particularly with regard to prayer. In our Gospel passage, Jesus tells a parable to teach us “to pray always without becoming weary.” The widow in the story keeps coming day after day to win a hearing with a corrupt judge. Despite what we might first think, the judge in the story does not stand for God. The parable makes its point by contrasting the judge with our gracious and loving God saying: If a powerless widow can wear down a corrupt judge through her perseverance alone, how much more will God, the just and merciful judge that God is, hear our prayers and answer them if we persevere in prayer. In that regard, we are to remember that God loving us as God does will always give us what we need in answer to our prayer which isn’t necessarily what we want. Fr. John Mark Ettensohn, OMI