Be like Benigna

There is a cat who lives in the basement below the monastery and spends much of her time outside behind the monastery. We’ve named her Benigna. Br. Joseph regularly puts out food for her and makes sure she gets any attention she needs. This arrangement, however, is not up to her demanding standards. She will regularly approach windows and doors when she hears somebody on the other side, and start making either a quiet, plaintive meow if somebody is right next to the window or door, and then a louder, even more anguished yowl of sadness if the initial meow fails. This makes it extremely clear to whoever is on the other side of the window or door that she would very much rather not be outside at that moment. And it frequently works, even with those of us who are not particularly strong lovers of animals. She will be let in to wander inside the monastery for a time before, sadly, returning outside when whoever let her in needs to move on to something else.

This is a very similar scene to the parable told in today’s Gospel: there is a judge who neither fears God nor respects any human being. He is, however, a judge, and a widow needs him to make a just decision for her. So, the widow pesters him until he gives in, and gives her the just decision she needed, not out of any love for justice, but out of fear of what she might do if he doesn’t. Before the parable starts, we are told what it means, and what point Jesus is trying to make: like the widow, and like Benigna, we should pray without becoming weary so that God will answer our prayers, and do justice for us.

Nevertheless, like many of the parables, the way it makes its point seems counter-intuitive. God is not an unjust judge who needs to be reminded of what others are due. He is full of mercy and justice for all who call on Him; we cannot add anything to His Goodness. So why would we need to tell Him what He ought to do for us? Does God really not act justly with us until we pester him and remind him?

There’s a second set of questions that is also raised. If God answers prayers quickly, as Jesus says, then why does He seem not to answer ours? We pray every night for the end of the war in Ukraine, and yet it continues. Is this not a just request?

We will start with the first set of questions: whether God needs our prayers, as the parable seems to imply. In the first reading, the Israelites are fighting the Amalekites, one of their fiercest enemies early on in the Old Testament. Joshua, whose name is the Hebrew version of Jesus, both of which mean “the Lord Saves,” leads the men in the battle. Whenever his hands are raised, hold the staff God gave him, Israel succeeds in the battle. Whenever his hands rest, Amalek succeeds. Aaron and Hur put down a rock for Moses to sit on and help support his hands so that Israel will succeed, and Joshua leads the people to victory. So, what does this tell us about the parable of the widow and the unjust judge?

We’ll start with the act itself that Moses is doing: he is raising his arms towards God. Traditionally, this is a posture known as the Orans. You will see it frequently during the Mass every time the priest is offering prayers to God on behalf of the people. From this posture, we can see that Moses is offering prayer to God on behalf of the people, a prayer that justice may be done and that the Israelites may be victorious in the battle.

And that continuity of prayer is itself important. Whenever that prayer gets broken, whenever the link between Moses and God, between the Israelites and God through Moses is broken, the battle turns against them. God supports Israel through Moses’ prayer. When Moses’ prayer breaks, and the Israelites try to fight on their own, they lose. So Aaron and Hur help to support Moses in his prayer so that he can intercede for the people before God, and keep the battle as Amalek vs. God, which Amalek will never be able to win, and not Amalek vs. Israel, which Israel would lose. Joshua leads that battle and ultimately wins it. And his name tells exactly what is going on so long as Moses is praying for the people: the Lord Saves.

So, if we take this back to the Gospel story, the continuity of prayer, the repeated pestering is not something that changes God’s mind, as it changed the mind of the unjust judge. Rather, the continual repetition, the maintenance of a perpetual posture of prayer, is something that changes us: it brings us into God’s presence, it transforms us, as Israel is transformed by Moses’ prayer. Through prayer, we communicate with God, and, by communicating with God, we become more like God. Our continual prayer is not a pestering of God, as it was of the unjust judge, but a transformation of ourselves in the light of God’s presence. From the outside, it still looks like pestering, which is why the parable works. However, the unjust judge needed to be reminded to do justice by the widow. In contrast to that, it is us who need to be reminded of the obligations of justice to God and to our neighbors in the light of the perfectly just judge. This addresses the first set of questions: whether the parable makes sense because of what we know about God. It raises the second set of questions: does what the parable say actually happen? Does God answer our prayers when we call out to Him day and night?

The Gospel passage ends with a strange question, that appears to come out of left field. After describing God speedily doing justice, unlike the unjust judge who delayed until he had been pestered, Jesus asks: “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” What does this have to do with God speedily answering our prayers? It is only through faith that we are able to pray. It is only through faith that we can see God’s answers to our prayers. Without faith, we can neither bring ourselves into God’s presence, and into continual prayer, nor can we interpret God’s answers to our or others’ prayers. Only from the standpoint of faith can we answer affirmatively that God does answer our prayers. And this leads to the key question: how do we build our faith?

Put in another way, when we have faith, our arms are raised towards God in prayer, like Moses, and God succeeds for us in our battle against sin. The faith itself is a part of our continual prayer. When we lack faith, our arms fall away from God and we try to struggle on our own and we lose the battle against sin. Like the Israelites, we have been given many supports for our faith, led by Jesus Christ, we follow in His ways, as the Israelites followed Joshua in the battle. Through His leadership, by his grace, we are made triumphant in faith. That is one support. As the second reading describes, we have the scriptures, the books of Moses, and the prophets in the Old Testament, as well as the Gospels and the Apostolic letters in the New Testament. We can see this in our way. We have the support of the Church, built on the foundation of Christ, and on the rock of Peter. We have the support of the Liturgy, anticipated by the Priesthood of Aaron, who supports one arm of Moses and the Tabernacle build by the grandson of Hur, who supports Moses’ other arm.

All of these supports help bring us the victory against our sins. Insofar as we take advantage of them, we can answer affirmatively that, yest, when the Son of Man comes, he will find faith on earth.