Questions for reflection

As you slowly read this Gospel passage, allow its words to soak into your mind. You may want to light a candle to help you ponder the passage, reflect on the image above or on the words of Pope Francis below. You might want to imagine that Jesus is telling you personally to pray and not lose heart.

1. What is this passage saying to you?

2. What word(s), sentence or phrase in this Gospel passage most caught your attention; most touched your heart; most challenged you; most comforted you? Is there anything in this passage that you found uncomfortable or startling?

3. ‘Jesus told his disciples a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.’ How do you deal with challenging situations? Do you persevere in bringing them before God in prayer? Do you get impatient with God when you feel that he has not answered your plea immediately? Does God’s apparent silence make you lose heart and rely on yourself?

4. In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man’. Have you ever come across people like the judge in the parable who doesn’t hear or even care about your predicament? What do you do? Do you persist with your complaint or do you give up in despair?

5. ‘And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, “Give me justice against my adversary.”’. Do you hear the cry of those who are being treated unjustly? How do you persist in prayer and action towards justice? In what ways can you work to ensure that those in the margins are being treated justly?

6. ‘And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?’ Have you ever had a prolonged period in your life where your prayers to God seemed to go unheard? How did it make you feel? Was your prayer eventually answered?

7. ‘Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’ When have you experienced doubt and despair? What did you do to address this doubt and despair?

Pope Francis tells us:

In today’s Gospel Jesus tells a parable on the need to pray always, never wearying. The main character is a widow whose insistent pleading with a dishonest judge succeeds in obtaining justice from him. Jesus concludes: if the widow succeeded in convincing that judge, do you think that God will not listen to us if we pray to him with insistence?

This is a good question that makes us examine an important aspect of the faith: God invites us to pray insistently not because he is unaware of our needs or because he is not listening to us. On the contrary, he is always listening and he knows everything about us lovingly.

Pray always, but not in order to convince the Lord by dint of words! He knows our needs better than we do! Indeed persevering prayer is the expression of faith in a God who calls us to fight with him every day and at every moment in order to conquer evil with good.

We shall now spend 10 minutes reflecting on this scripture passage by reading, repeating, responding and resting as described above. We will then share what we thought, felt etc. only if you are comfortable to do so.