Reflections of Caritas

GOSPEL: Luke 18:1-8

PERSIST IN YOUR PRAYER!

Dear friends,

Our readings reveal to us the absolute necessity of praying always without becoming weary. Most of us are not at that stage of life yet! The first reading, from Exodus 17:8-13, tells about Moses holding his hands in prayer. When he became weary, the others helped him keeps his hands up in prayers. This story touches so many aspects of our own lives. We also become weary in praying. Sometimes we don’t even want to pray at all. Sometimes our whole being has lost interest in prayer. We need others to help us keep on praying. Sometimes we lose interest in praying because nothing seems to happen. We pray and God seems silent. We pray and God seems to ignore us. And so we stop praying! That is natural enough. We just don’t do things that have no result. We need others to encourage us and to help us.

Jesus, in today’s Gospel, invites us to keep praying! Persist in your prayer! Don’t give up! Insist that God answers you! We must base our prayer on a belief in God and a belief that God is active in our world.  When we have those two beliefs at the very foundation of our life, then we can persist in prayer with the help of God’s mercy. We must pester God and keep on insisting that God give us what we need. In this struggle with God, our faith can deepen and our daily awareness of God’s love, compassion and mercy can grow incredibly.

Prayer is our important link to God. He desires nothing better than to hear from us, so God wants us to pray. Why God does wants us to pray? It's because prayer is the simplest form of conversing with God. This means you are talking with God and God is making His presence felt by you. In our daily lives we tend to undermine the importance of prayer. However, prayer is a source of spiritual power and strength. We must never be tired of praying because God is never tired of listening to us. He might take time to open the door like the judge in today’s parable. However, if we do not quit, He will surely hear, and answer us.

God Bless,

Rev. Father Frank Kyazze