Perseverance

During my second year of seminary I met a religious sister at the liturgical office of Rome. Chatting with her, I realized she lived in the neighborhood below the seminary, an area with lots of elderly people and youth with drug problems.

She asked me for help visiting these families. The seminary had already assigned me to work at a Latin American parish and since free time in seminary is almost non-existent, it was very difficult for me to help her. She would call me once a month to invite me to a holy hour and reflection her community organized in the neighborhood. I would sometimes go but had little interest and little time.

Every time she called me she sounded enthusiastic and happy, as if it were the first time she invited me. I figured she would stop calling after getting a certain number of nos. But she continued calling and asking for almost three years… and it drove me nuts.

One month before leaving seminary a friend mentioned to me that he wanted an assignment where he could speak Italian and be more involved with the Roman people. That same day I ran into the sister in the city. God did his work – during my last month the seminary approved the assignment and my friend began visiting families. Two weeks ago while I was in Rome, I had dinner with this sister and the four seminarians who will participate in this apostolic work this year.

This is the work of God. This is how God works. The sister’s prayers were answered after years of perseverance, she never gave up. What seemed impossible to me, unfolded with the least amount of effort in less than one month. This sister is the widow from today’s Gospel.

Moses raised his arms up to serve as a mediator between God and Israel. He didn’t persevere out of his own efforts, but through the support of Aaron and Hur who held up his arms when he grew tiered. Alone he would have failed and so would have Israel. He persevered with the grace of God and the help of those around him.

We need to persevere in our prayer, we must be constant and never give up. This is the only way we can be sure that whatever comes our way in life truly is the will of God.

Saint Paul speaks of the power of Sacred Scripture. It is capable of giving us wisdom for salvation through Jesus Christ. Scripture then gives us the ideal method to pray, we need to pray with Scripture and persevere in it.

I recommend reading Scripture a bit each day. Don’t read the Bible from cover to cover, starting with Genesis and ending with Revelation. It wasn’t written in that order, so there’s no need to read it in that order. A good place to start is the Gospel of Saint Matthew. Read twenty minutes each day, mark the spot and put it down. Take time to imagine the passage you read in your mind. Play it like a movie. What do you see? Hear? Smell? Touch? Let Scripture come alive in your mind. How is the Lord speaking to you through that particular passage? What strikes you?

In our praying with Scripture, we grow in our knowledge of Christ. As we grow in knowledge of him, we grow in our love for him. We cannot love what we do not know!

Prayer is a dwelling with God – spending time with our creator and redeemer. It’s having a conversation with Him as Adam did in paradise, the way Mary talked to her son in their house in Nazareth.

We encounter God in Scripture and we encounter him here at the Eucharist. Word and Sacrament come together during Mass and God manifests himself before our very eyes. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said she didn’t pray for success but for faithfulness, for the grace to persevere. Let’s pray today that the Lord will keep us faithful in our prayer, that we too may persevere.