Without Becoming Weary
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October 20, 2019“Pray always, without becoming weary.” (Lk 18:1)
Pope Francis reminds us that we tire of asking for mercy much more quickly than God tires of giving it. To ask is an act of faith. This is what the widow in today’s gospel does, consistently, persistently and insistently. The one who cries out day and night for justice believes that she will be heard, somehow, someday.
I wonder if I ask enough. What should I ask for? World peace? An end to poverty and oppression, terror and hate, natural disasters and human misery? Such prayers begin to sound hollow and empty on my lips. It seems more realistic to suffer and to do what is possible than to ask for impossible things. Perhaps I lack faith. Perhaps I narrow down my field of concern too much to immediate problems that I think I can fix myself. Perhaps, unlike this widow, I turn my back on the judge who seems not to answer and set up my own rival court in which I am the sole arbiter and judge. The more I allow myself to stray toward self-reliance, the more my life becomes a barren desert. It is not God who becomes cold, hard and distant (like an unjust judge), but me. The use of an unjust judge as a foil for God in the parable contains some humor, if we are open to receiving a dig in the ribs. Is Jesus making fun of us? Don’t we experience prayer this way at certain times in our life? We keep asking, he keeps ignoring us. That’s just not fair! Somehow, I have lost contact with the true God and find myself carrying an idol, hard, heavy and incapable of tenderness. As Isaiah puts it:
“Bel bows down, Nebo stoops, their idols are on beasts and cattle; these things you carry are loaded as burdens on weary animals.” (Is 46:1)
Perhaps we are being invited to laugh at our image of God as an unjust judge and let humor break through our blindness.
The first reading from Exodus illustrates this in the person of Moses, with the support of Aaron and Hur, praying with hands extended over the battle between Israel and Amalek. It is made clear in the story that his intercession is effective, because the forces of Israel prevail when he extends his hands and are overcome when he lets them drop. But he grows weary. He finds it hard to keep his hands extended. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. We too are weak, inconstant, we grow weary in prayer. We come to wonder if our words are heard, if they have meaning or efficacy. Once in a while we see the effects of prayer in the recovery of a sick child, in the courage found by someone facing an adverse diagnosis, in the inexplicable turn-around in the attitude and behavior of someone who has hurt us. These things do happen, and we are encouraged by them. We then have confidence in God’s power working through our extended hands. Perhaps we even take too much to ourselves, my powerful prayer, my storming of heaven, my intercessory mission. But then, when the forces of Amalek continue to muster, sickness, misfortune and tragedy continue to occur unabated, we grow tired. Our arms of prayer grow weary and we flag. We realize that without help, we cannot even ask, intercede, or bring support to others.
“Moses’ hands, however, grew tired;
so they put a rock in place for him to sit on.
Meanwhile Aaron and Hur supported his hands,
one on one side and one on the other,
so that his hands remained steady till sunset.” (Ex 17:12)
This is where being part of a community of prayer is so important. Our life of prayer here in the monastery goes on, night and day, hour after hour. It transcends my own feelings, my own fervor or despondency, my strength or my weakness. Our Constitutions speak of the monastic community as an image of the church at prayer, a common life after the pattern of the gospel in which no spiritual gift is lacking to us (Cf. C 3.4). Nothing is lacking because God is invested in this community of prayer for his glory and the salvation of the world. What may be denied to one of us at a given moment is abundant in another. We can take courage in this. We can find faith to go on without always seeing the results of our prayer, and without always feeling their efficacy, because we are part of an unending sacrifice of praise ascending to God, which is itself his gift.
In the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, we hear a people unafraid to cry out, day and night, to give voice to longing and hope and bitterness and pain. We inherit from this people a book of words for use between human beings and God. And so our life is framed by a cry to heaven:
“O God, come to my assistance;
O Lord, make haste to help me.” (Ps 69:2)
The Psalms are sometimes illustrated with the image of a man playing a stringed instrument, a lyre or a harp. This is David. His instrument symbolizes his role as psalmist par excellence, singer of Israel’s songs. In truth, David himself is the instrument, the lyre or the harp on which is played the melody of human pain, and the harmony of divine solidarity. Our desire is to live and breathe the words of the Psalms, allowing them to deepen our awareness and acceptance of the human condition, and our faith in God’s unwavering attentiveness and involvement in our lives. We want to be prayed by the prayers of humanity, plucked and resonant like a lyre.
Saint Benedict experienced this in a moment of spiritual enlightenment at the end of his life. During the night he ascended a tower to pray and was graced with a vision of the whole world gathered in a single ray of light. The light of God’s countenance holds the whole world. This reality, more fundamental than any other, is revealed in peak moments, and supports us in our efforts toward continual prayer. We do not always see, but we must return again and again to the truth of the matter, to the real God who is not cold, hard and distant, but whose face is turned to us always, and who is intimately concerned with every detail of our lives and the lives of all people.
One of our sisters was inspired to carve an image of St Benedict, consumed by prayer. This striking image seeks to express something of the last moment of Benedict’s life, when: “supporting his weakened body on the arms of his brethren, he stood with his hands raised to heaven and as he prayed he breathed his last” (Dialogs II.37). I invite you to spend some time with this image, pondering its meaning for our life of prayer for the glory of God and the salvation of the world.
