Homily: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Friends, I love the beginning of today’s Gospel reading because it gets right to the point of the lesson on which we are being invited to reflect. It said, “Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.” Even with the main point so clearly laid out for us, it’s worth asking ourselves a couple of questions: 1) Why is it so important for us to be reminded of the “necessity… to pray always without becoming weary”, and 2) If God is all-knowing, then he already knows what we need, and if he is all-good, then he should be ready to give us what we need when we need it; so why do we even need to pray at all?
First, the necessity to pray always without becoming weary. There’s a story from World War I about a hospital in France that, because of the war, was grossly understaffed by nurses. In the nursery for newborn babies, there were way more babies than could be readily attended to by the nursing staff. This meant that babies were constantly crying in need of more food, or to have a diaper changed, or whatever. The nurses were desperate to keep up, but simply couldn’t. What they noticed, however, was that, after a certain time, some of the babies would simply stop crying, even though they hadn’t been attended to. After the war, some scientists studied these stories and drew the conclusion that the babies simply grew weary with crying–that is, with asking for what they needed… so weary that they gave up the effort.
Now, we all know that babies operate almost completely on instincts: their minds aren’t developed enough to make rational decisions about how to behave. What this story illustrates for us is that it is something of our human nature to weary in asking for something when, after a long time of asking, we don’t get what that for which we are asking. If we take a few moments now, each of us could probably think of a time in our lives when we asked for something repeatedly but did not receive it; and that, after a time of asking, we simply got tired of asking for it and gave up. Maybe it was that toy we wanted for our birthday or Christmas, or to visit the special amusement park to which all our friends were going but we weren’t allowed to go, or maybe it was that person we wanted to date but who always refused to go out with us. Whatever the case may be, each of us has probably had the experience of being refused something for which we asked repeatedly, only to give up asking because we became weary of asking.
Thus, Jesus has to instruct his disciples (us included) of the “necessity… to pray always without becoming weary”. He knows that our nature is to become weary and give up and so he gives this parable as a motivation to continue to show up in prayer and to ask for what we need in confidence that God, our Good Father, will respond in his time. As the parable shows us, if even a wicked person can be convinced to respond to persistent petition–even if for purely practical reasons and without care for the person who is asking–then we should have confidence that our Good God–who loves us and desires our good–will respond favorably to our petitions when, by faith, we are persistent in asking.
This brings us to our second question, then: If God is all-knowing, then he already knows what we need; and if he is all-good, then he should be ready to give us what we need when we need it; so why do we even need to pray at all? This is a good question to ask and the answer is not readily apparent. I think that each of us would question whether a parent is good if we observe them seemingly resisting to give their children good things for which they ask–perhaps even the things that the parent already knows the child needs–until the child proves his/her faithfulness by persistently asking for it. So why does it seem that God, our Good Father, does the same to us?
Here, I think that Saint Augustine gives a good answer. In a letter to a Christian widow who was asking his advice on prayer, Saint Augustine wrote this: “Why should he ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realize that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it) but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is why we are told: ‘Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke with unbelievers.’” He goes on to say: “The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed.”
With these wise words, we discover that our perception was too narrow. Our question was whether our God is truly good if he resists the petitions of his children, when in truth our Good God sees our limited capacity to receive the gift he wishes to give us and so waits until, by our persistent asking, our desire increases, our hope strengthens, our faith deepens, and, thus, we become capable of receiving the “very great gift” he is ready to give us. In other words, we imagine ourselves ready to receive the gift as soon as we ask for it; but God, who knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves, sees that we are not ready, and so waits until, through our persistent prayer, our longing for the gift over time grows our capacity to receive the gift.
With this understanding, we can see clearly why Jesus felt it necessary to admonish his disciples to “pray always without becoming weary”. He knew that we would not understand that our capacity to receive all of what God wishes to give us is too small, and so he gave us this parable to remind us that our persistent prayer would be both our faithful witness to our belief in God’s goodness, as well as the way that we would grow our capacity to receive his gift in time.
Jesus’ final question in the Gospel reading reveals his understanding of our weaknesses, however. Even though he gives this great parable as an encouragement to his disciples to “pray always without becoming weary”, he still feels the need to ask the question: “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Here our Lord is implying that, when we become weary and stop praying for what we need, what we are demonstrating is a lack of faith in our Good God, who will give us what we need when (as Saint Agustine teaches us) we are capable of receiving it. Therefore, we are reminded to approach this teaching humbly: not believing that we will always be strong enough to persevere in prayer, but rather humbly submitting ourselves to the will of God and asking for the strength to persevere: a prayer that God will surely not fail to answer.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, let us humbly renew our prayers today for the most pressing needs in the world–for faith to grow among us, for peace throughout the world, and for justice for each and every one of us–and commit ourselves to perseverance in prayer: so that we might one day have the capacity to receive the “very great gift” that our Good God longs to give us, and so that the Son of Man, at his coming, might find faith: both in us and throughout the world.
Given in Spanish at Our Lady of the Lakes Parish: Monticello, IN
October 19th, 2025
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