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Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Gospel Luke 18:1-8
Jesus told his disciples a parable
about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.
He said, "There was a judge in a certain town
who neither feared God nor respected any human being.
And a widow in that town used to come to him and say,
'Render a just decision for me against my adversary.'
For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought,
'While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being,
because this widow keeps bothering me
I shall deliver a just decision for her
lest she finally come and strike me.'"
The Lord said, "Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says.
Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones
who call out to him day and night?
Will he be slow to answer them?
I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.
But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
*****
Sometimes prayer seems demeaning for both the petitioner and for the one being petitioned. Isn't there virtue in responding to a simple request promptly? Why should our Father expect us to come back again and again until, apparently, he gets sick of the annoyance and grants what he could have granted much earlier.
The first thing to note is that this lesson is not about God but about us. In this story the widow is a poor person, and perhaps therein lies our answer. The poor person feels their need, feels their spiritual hunger and likely enough his physical hunger too. Feeling hungry is good for us; feeling full and satisfied may cause us to miss important road signs and go off the path without even realising it. Our praying with insistence is an expression of our hunger. We really feel the need for the food of life, which comes only from our Source, our Mother/Father, our Divine Lord.
A more adequate answer lies, I believe, in the meaning of life itself. What are we here for? Or as the old Penny Catechism had it: "Why did God make me? A/. To know, love and serve him on this earth and be happy with him forever in heaven." But why is life so complicated? Is God a bit limited in being unable to make a creature that can know, love and serve perfectly from the start? No! On the contrary, God is so competent that he can make a creature that can learn to know, love and serve, and not only one but billions and billions, each one discovering their own unique way of knowing the Father, loving and responding to his love. Each of us develops our own unique relationship with God, with Life itself. That's what we're here for. And that's why we say that life on this earth is development!
I think we might be able to see something more if we look at it from the perspective of the third stage of the journey, where our experience of union with God becomes an habitual condition. We may even have the experience of "nothingness", which John of the Cross says is a necessary condition for being at one with the Divine: It is a sense and conviction that 'I am nothing'. (See Appendix below)
"Nothingness" is analogous with humility but of a different order. While humility is a virtue you develop through practice, the awareness of being nothing is a gift you discover. It may come as something of a surprise to find yourself feeling quite at home in your state of need. Any sense of competition, any battle to be better than this other bloke, is gone. Now our total awareness is in the privilege of God's presence - yes, in spite of all the sins and betrayals of a pretty shoddy life. We know now that all our efforts, necessary as they have been, are not what counts in the end, but our Father's embracing love. That's really as hard to believe as it's hard to believe a someone has risen from the grave three days in.
Jeshua's mission was to show us this love in his life and death. Paul was over-awed by it when he wrote: "He loved me - and gave himself up for me!" I'm the one who tried to stamp out this new community, and yet it is all for me - because He loves me.
How do you feel when you come eventually to see that life's goal is not achieved through effort but, in the Father's love, it is simply given? You gradually come to know what nothingness means as an experience of your mysterious Life in Christ. You know that your hollowness will be filled with the fullness of God in Christ. And that's enough. The rest is just a hunger, a longing that defies analysis. It is a longing for the One who will fill this emptiness to overflowing, with joy. A longing to be with God. A longing that is squeezed tight by contrition for those things we've done wrong or not done at all, the times we chose not to be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect, but chose to stick to our own little cosmos where everything revolves around me.
A sense of nothingness might be the ultimate stage of hunger.
Additional Reading:
I've been reading a quite wonderful book: Christian Mysticism: The Art of the Inner Way, written by William McNamara , OCD. (Element Inc. 1991) He dedicates the whole of chapter 4 to "The Experience of Nada - the Sense of Nothingness".
"Nada is the one mystery where all religious traditions of both East and West converge. John of the Cross and others sum up the spiritual life in terms of it., Todo y Nada. Unless you are detached from everything that is not God, you cannot belong to God. Unless you are emptied, you cannot be filled. Unless you lose your life you cannot find it...
"Nothingness may enliven or destroy those who face it, but those who ignore it are condemned to unreality. They cannot pretend to a real life which, if it is full of real risk, is also full of promise." (p. 75)