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Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
October 20, 2013
Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola, Chestnut Hill MA
Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J.
I believe that God always hears our prayers. And yes,
sometimes, often even, God answers those prayers to our
satisfaction.
I believe that God always hears our prayers. But
sometimes, and not infrequently, it seems that those prayers
go unanswered.
I want to call your attention to the first line of today’s
gospel: Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity
for them to pray always without becoming weary. Various
translations of the first line of today’s gospel offer a slight
variation: Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity
for them to pray always lest they become disheartened, or
dispirited, or discouraged, or despondent, or downcast, or
downhearted. I provide you with these adjectives because, yes,
I love alliteration, but more so because these words help break
open the Lord’s message to us.
A few days ago, a friend called me and asked for advice.
She was hoping to bring a comforting word to a relative
overcome with grief because that relative had recently lost her
teenage daughter to illness. What is a mother’s prayer for her
child…that the child would be healthy and well, happy and
hopeful? It seems that God ignored that prayer. The mother is
downhearted.
Have any of you ever been to Jerusalem? During my visits
there I spend time at the Western Wall, also known as the
Wailing Wall. A tradition there is that people write their
prayers of petition on pieces of paper, fold them, and stick
them between the bricks of the wall. I wonder…how many
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people believe that God actually answered the prayers that
have been placed in that wall over the centuries? How many
people have been disheartened when they feel that God has not
answered them?
How about Lourdes? Yes, it is proven that there have
been healings of physical illness for some pilgrims. But most
pilgrims who go there leave with the same physical infirmities
that they had when they arrived. Did God ignore their prayers?
How many of them are dispirited?
And so I ask you, in your relationship with God have you
ever felt disheartened, or dispirited, or discouraged, or
despondent, or downcast, or downhearted? In the face of great
grief or disappointment, has it felt as though God turned a deaf
ear to your sincere prayers, that God seemed to be asleep or on
an extended vacation? Have you ever experienced the
sentiments of Psalm 10: Why, O Lord, do you stand afar off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Or Psalm 22:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so
far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?”
Have there been experiences in your life where you could
resonate with Saint Theresa of Avila, great mystic and doctor of
the Church, who is reputed to have said, “God, if this is the way
you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few.”
It is true that much of the sadness and misery of human
beings is caused by human beings, that our suffering is often
self-imposed. But sometimes, really bad things happen to
really good people. This brings us to the age-old question:
Why does God let such bad things happen?
What Jesus is telling us in the parables of the unjust judge
and the persistent widow is that we should never give up on
God, no matter how despondent we may be. God wants us to
be like the persistent widow, staying in relationship, confident
that God hears and answers prayers. At the end of the today’s
gospel passage, Jesus laments, “Will such faith be found when
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the Son of Man comes?” In this lament, Jesus notes how easy it
can be for us to lose heart.
A cornerstone of Ignatian spirituality is the colloquy, a
fancy word for conversation. At times, it is altogether
appropriate to you engage in a colloquy of complaint. When
you lose heart, emulate the great biblical characters and saints:
give God a piece of your mind, grumble, kvetch, get angry at
God, yell at God even. But a word of advice that applies to our
relationship with God as with our relationship with others:
don’t be passive aggressive; don’t give God the silent
treatment. Many people have done just that, those who are so
disillusioned in their relationship with God that they shrug God
off, shut God out, lose faith, and never darken the door of a
church again.
Yes, complain to God about unanswered prayers. But
there is another insight, a very important one, I think. The
insight comes from none other than the renowned theologian
Garth Brooks. Not really, of course -- he is hardly a theologian,
but is a Country and Western singer. Brooks tells a story about
one of his songs. In the song, which made it to #1 in the
country music charts, Brooks recalls a time when he, with his
wife, ran into an old flame, with whom he was once head over
heals in love. He sings:
She was the one that I'd wanted for all times;
And each night I'd spend prayin' that God would make her mine.
And if he'd only grant me this wish I wished back then
I'd never ask God for anything again.
Then he goes on to describe the encounter:
She wasn't quite the angel that I remembered in my dreams.
And I could tell that time had changed me in her eyes too it seemed.
We tried to talk about the old days, there wasn't much we could recall
I guess the good Lord knows what he's doin' after all.
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I don’t know if you’ve ever run into this situation with an
old flame. But I’m quite certain that there are times in your life
when you’ve had a similar experience: when you’ve wanted
something, worked for something, desired something, and
prayed for something that did not happen.
So, when unanswered prayers break your heart, when
you are disheartened and dispirited, when you see others
suffer needlessly, when you think that the world is just a mess,
when God seems uncaring, go ahead, give God a piece of your
mind, don’t hesitate to engage in a colloquy of complaint. Be as
persistent as the widow even if God seems as unjust as the
judge.
But when it comes to other unanswered prayers, what is
called for is not grousing, but gratitude. We sure know what
we want, but God usually knows what we need. Sometimes,
and perhaps much often than we imagine, we should echo the
lyric of Garth Brook’s song:
Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers.
Remember, when you're talkin' to the man upstairs,
Just because he doesn't answer doesn't mean he don't care.
Some of god's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.