I was out of town for the weekend, so no recording.
We know the importance of persistence: if there’s some goal you want to reach, you will receive it if you are persistent in seeking that goal. Those who have played or currently play sports, you know that if you’re going to be successful in a sport, you need to persist in working out and practicing the skills needed for that sport. In our jobs, careers, and businesses, we know that success in those positions and businesses come when we work hard and do our best at those positions. Persistence is vital to success in the world.
Persistence is also just as vital in spiritual life. In the Gospel parable today, Our Lord tells us that the man with the visitor “will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” It’s not a coincidence that this parable comes right after Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray with the Our Father. Our Lord is telling us that we need to persist in prayer, just as we need to persist in anything important in our lives.
Jesus reinforces this when he says, “ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be open to you.” He doesn’t say that asking and knocking are only done once. Instead, he tells us that we need to be persistent in seeking God’s will. If we wish to ask and knock, we need to seek, and this seeking is an on-going process in our lives that should never stop.
Persistence is so important in the spiritual life that we need to be praying daily, seeking God’s will. If we are not daily entering into prayer, we are not growing in the spiritual life. Attending Mass weekly — or less frequently for too many Catholics — is not enough to nurture our spiritual lives.
If we want to see what persistence in prayer looks like, we can use Abraham in our first reading as the example. Abraham knew of God’s plans for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and wanted to do what he could to save innocent lives in the cities. So, to convince God not to kill those innocent, he “bargained” God down from 50 innocent people to 45 to 40 to 30 to 20 to asking if God would spare the cities if there were only 10 innocent people.
This is the persistence we need to have. As Catholics, we should be “storming Heaven” with our prayers. Our prayers should be frequent and many. If we are persistent in our prayers, we will achieve the goal of the spiritual life: the Holy Spirit guiding us to eternal life. As Our Lord says in the Gospel: “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” God wants to give us the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us. We only have to ask.
So, we have our goal in the spiritual life. May we exercise the persistence in prayer necessary to achieve that goal, because, as Jesus said, “For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” May we ask, seek, and knock so that we may receive, find, and have the door to eternal life opened for us.
