Saturday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 18:1-8

One of the attributes attributed to Luke’s Gospel is that his is a ‘Gospel of Prayer’. We see Jesus praying in this Gospel more than in the others and he gives more teaching about prayer. Urging perseverance, today:

Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.

This is very much a theme in Paul’s letters (see Rom 1:9-10; Rom 12:12; Eph 3:13; Eph 6:18; Col 1:3; 1 Thess 5:16-17; 2 Thess 1:11; 2 Thess 3:13; 2 Cor 4:1,16 and Gal 6:9).

The parable features a totally corrupt judge, who fears neither God nor man. It also features a widow, probably the most powerless, the most pitiful and least pitied of people in the society of that time. She has lost her husband, re-marriage is likely out of the question, she has lost the support of her own family and her husband’s family, and there is nothing comparable to social welfare for her to lean on.

As far as a corrupt judge is concerned, she can be ignored. She has neither power nor money (for bribing). But this widow is different—she is persistent and will not give up. Eventually, the judge, for his sheer peace of mind, settles in her favour.

If, Jesus concludes, a corrupt and ruthless judge can be moved by the perseverance of a helpless widow, what kind of response can we expect when we, his people, call out in our helplessness to our loving and compassionate God?

I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.

That is, he will give them what is rightfully due to them.

But Jesus asks, in a challenge which should make us sit up and take notice:

…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

Times of persecution are on the way—they have already begun as this Gospel is written—and some followers will give up under pressure. They will not persevere in keeping close contact with God in prayer, so as to find him and his peace in the midst of their sufferings.

It is easy to pray when things are going well. It is often in times of pressure that we, too, give up praying when we need it most, when our faith is really being put to the test. We have to pray constantly and consistently. We should not be afraid to ask for what we believe we really need.

But then, if God is such a caring person, why should we have to pray to him at all? We need to keep praying, not for his sake, but for our own. By doing so, we maintain an awareness that:

I can do nothing on my own. (John 5:30)

As well, the more we pray, the closer we come to God. And as we pray, what we ask for will gradually change. Ultimately what we want is what we need. And what we need is to bring our thinking, our dreams, our ambitions totally into line with God’s way of seeing things. The problem is, as Jesus says at the end today, how many people will really be doing that when he comes looking for us?

How often do I pray? How consistently do I ask? What do I ask for? What do I really want? Do I distinguish between what I want and what I really need? And do I really have that faith and trust in the loving providence of my God?

There is another and very different interpretation of this passage. When we read this parable about perseverance, we usually think of it in these terms: God is the judge and we are the widow. This means we should persevere in pestering God until our needs are met.

But what happens if we turn that around and say that we are the judge and God is the widow? In some ways, this interpretation makes more sense. We, like the judge, are basically unjust. Sometimes we, too, have no fear of God; that is, we do not allow God to scare us into being good.

Similarly, like the judge we persist in refusing to listen to the cries of the poor all around us. But God is the persistent widow who will not go away. God keeps badgering us, refusing to accept as final our ‘No’ to love. God will persist until we render a just judgment, that is, until we let the goodness out, until we learn to love.*

In Genesis, we are told we are made in the image and likeness of God. Perhaps our prayer could be:

Dear God, Persevering One, help us to be more like you!

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*This second interpretation of the parable comes from Sister Melanie Svoboda SND, Review for Religious, Sept-Oct 1996.

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Saturday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Wisdom 18:14-16; 19:6-9

Our final reading from Wisdom. It is full of poetical images, although underneath the beautiful language is the power of God that brings both life and death. The context is the liberation of the Israelites from their life of slavery in Egypt.

The reading opens with a beautiful image of “gentle [or peaceful] silence” covering the world, which is in the darkness of night. Then from God’s heavenly throne, his all-powerful Word “leaped from heaven”. This sentence (up to just this point) is used during the Christmas liturgy to express God’s entrance into our world through the Incarnation, made visible through the birth of Jesus.

The end of the sentence, however, is omitted. The complete phrase reads:

…your all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne into the midst of the land that was doomed…

In this context, it is a different “word” that is being spoken of. It is the ‘word’ as the one who carries out God’s judgement on a sinful world. In this case, it is the sinful world of the Pharaoh’s Egypt which will not let the Israelites leave the country.

In the Book of Exodus, the massacre of the first-born, attributed to God himself and accompanied by the Destroying Angel, here in Wisdom becomes the work of the divine Word. The Word had already been represented as executing God’s sentences by, among others, Isaiah. This dramatic passage draws its inspiration from a verse in 1 Chronicles and possibly also from Homer (Iliad IV). In apocalyptic terms, the Word of Judgement prefigures, not the Incarnation of the Word in Jesus, but the dreadful aspect of his Second Coming.

The massacre is then described when the Word of Judgement carries out God’s clear command:

…a stern warrior carrying the sharp sword of your authentic command, and stood and filled all things with death…

This refers to the slaying of the first-born of every Egyptian family.

The author now moves on to the crossing of the Red Sea (the Sea of Reeds) as the Israelites fled from the Pharaoh and his armies. The author sees this action as part of a “whole creation…fashioned anew” as God manipulates the very elements of nature in leading his people out into a new world.

He describes the various wonders that took place when:

…the whole creation in its nature was fashioned anew, complying with your commands…

To facilitate the crossing of the Red Sea, the natural creation was re-organised or changed:

…so that your children might be kept unharmed.

In Genesis we see the elements brought into an ordered creation. Here a similar phenomenon is now witnessed, but this time the extraordinary behaviour of air, land and water violates the order established by the Creator.

As a cloud, representing the protective presence of Yahweh hovered over them, dry land appeared, where just previously there had been water, and the sea became “an unhindered way”; stormy waves became a green plain. A Hebrew midrash speaks, not only of abundant grass, but of fruit trees lining the road opened through the waters. Later rabbinical tradition enumerates ten miracles attending the crossing of the Red Sea.

Then, under the sheltering hand of God, the people crossed in safety, mesmerised by the amazing prodigies they were seeing. No wonder they were filled with joy and excitement:

For they ranged like horses and leaped like lambs, praising you, O Lord, who delivered them.

Underlying the reading is that God brings liberation to those who put their trust in him, but destruction to those who violate his way. Jesus, too, as Simeon foretold in the Temple, would bring about both “the rise and fall of many”.

Jesus can be a source of life for all who walk his Way of Truth and Life or we can reject that Way, and opt for darkness and death:

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. (Matt 12:30)

With Jesus, there is no half-way position, no fence-sitting, no neutrality.

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