The Courage to Keep Knocking
Opening
There is something wonderfully stubborn about a person who refuses to give up hope.
A farmer plants seed without seeing the harvest. A mother prays for a wandering child. A man returns to his work after yesterday’s disappointments. Each acts upon a conviction that the present moment is not the whole story.
This morning, Our Lord tells us about a widow who will not stop asking for justice. She has neither influence nor power. She possesses only her cause and the determination to bring it before the judge again and again.
Christ offers her as an example of prayer. But He leaves us with a question more searching than whether our petitions will be answered: when He returns, will He find faith upon the earth?
Let us begin this morning by placing our own unanswered prayers before Him.
Opening Verse
Lord, open my lips.
And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
Invitatory
Antiphon: Come, let us adore the Lord, whose mercy endureth for ever.
Psalm 94 (95) — Venite, exsultemus
Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
For in his hand are all the ends of the earth: and the heights of the mountains are his.
For the sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
Come let us adore and fall down: and weep before the Lord that made us.
For he is the Lord our God: and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
To day if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts:
As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness: where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works.
Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in heart.
And these men have not known my ways: so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Come, let us adore the Lord, whose mercy endureth for ever.
Psalmody
Psalm 91 (92) — Praise of God, the Creator
Antiphon: It is good to give praise to the Lord, and to show forth his mercy in the morning.
A psalm of a canticle on the sabbath day.
It is good to give praise to the Lord: and to sing to thy name, O most High.
To shew forth thy mercy in the morning, and thy truth in the night:
Upon an instrument of ten strings, upon the psaltery: with a canticle upon the harp.
For thou hast given me, O Lord, a delight in thy doings: and in the works of thy hands I shall rejoice.
O Lord, how great are thy works! thy thoughts are exceeding deep.
The senseless man shall not know: nor will the fool understand these things.
When the wicked shall spring up as grass: and all the workers of iniquity shall appear: That they may perish for ever and ever:
But thou, O Lord, art most high for evermore.
For behold thy enemies, O Lord, for behold thy enemies shall perish: and all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered.
But my horn shall be exalted like that of the unicorn: and my old age in plentiful mercy.
My eye also hath looked down upon my enemies: and my ear shall hear of the downfall of the malignant that rise up against me.
The just shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow up like the cedar of Libanus.
They that are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of the house of our God.
They shall still increase in a fruitful old age: and shall be well treated,
That they may shew, That the Lord our God is righteous, and there is no iniquity in him.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: It is good to give praise to the Lord, and to show forth his mercy in the morning.
Canticle — Ezekiel 36:24–28
The Lord promises a new heart and a new spirit.
Antiphon: I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you.
For I will take you from among the Gentiles, and will gather you together out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land.
And I will pour upon you clean water, and you shall be cleansed from all your filthiness, and I will cleanse you from all your idols.
And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my spirit in the midst of you: and I will cause you to walk in my commandments, and to keep my judgments, and do them.
And you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you.
Psalm 8 — The Greatness of God and the Dignity of Man
Antiphon: Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise.
Unto the end, for the presses: a psalm for David.
O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth! For thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thy enemies, that thou mayst destroy the enemy and the avenger.
For I will behold thy heavens, the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars which thou hast founded.
What is man that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him?
Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour:
And hast set him over the works of thy hands.
Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the beasts also of the fields.
The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea.
O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth!
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise.
Short Reading
2 Peter 3:13–15
But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promises, in which justice dwelleth.
Wherefore, dearly beloved, waiting for these things, be diligent that ye may be found before him unspotted and blameless in peace.
And account the longsuffering of our Lord, salvation.
Short Responsory
Lord, teach us to persevere in prayer.
Lord, teach us to persevere in prayer.
When our hearts grow weary, strengthen our faith.
Lord, teach us to persevere in prayer.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
Lord, teach us to persevere in prayer.
Gospel of the Day
Luke 18:1–8 — The Persistent Widow
And he spoke also a parable to them, that we ought always to pray, and not to faint,
Saying: There was a judge in a certain city, who feared not God, nor regarded man.
And there was a certain widow in that city; and she came to him, saying: Avenge me of my adversary.
And he would not for a long time. But afterwards he said within himself: Although I fear not God, nor regard man,
Yet because this widow is troublesome to me, I will avenge her, lest continually coming she weary me.
And the Lord said: Hear what the unjust judge saith.
And will not God revenge his elect who cry to him day and night? And will he have patience in their regard?
I say to you, that he will quickly revenge them. But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?
Benedictus — Canticle of Zachary
Luke 1:68–79
Antiphon: Blessed be the Lord, who hath visited his people and guided our feet into the way of peace.
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people:
And hath raised up an horn of salvation to us, in the house of David his servant:
As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, who are from the beginning:
Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us:
To perform mercy to our fathers, and to remember his holy testament,
The oath, which he swore to Abraham our father, that he would grant to us,
That being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve him without fear,
In holiness and justice before him, all our days.
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:
To give knowledge of salvation to his people, unto the remission of their sins:
Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the Orient from on high hath visited us:
To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Blessed be the Lord, who hath visited his people and guided our feet into the way of peace.
Intercessions
Trusting in the mercy of the Father, who hears the prayers of His children, let us offer our petitions.
Response: Lord, hear us and strengthen our faith.
For the Holy Father, our bishops, priests, and all who serve the Church: that they may remain faithful in prayer and courageous in proclaiming the Gospel.
Lord, hear us and strengthen our faith.
For the nations of the world, especially those suffering from war, injustice, and oppression: that those entrusted with authority may defend the weak and seek the common good.
Lord, hear us and strengthen our faith.
For those beginning their work today, for those searching for employment, and for those carrying heavy responsibilities: that their labor may be fruitful and their burdens made lighter.
Lord, hear us and strengthen our faith.
For parents and grandparents praying for their children, for families divided by distance or disagreement, and for all who wait anxiously for news of someone they love.
Lord, hear us and strengthen our faith.
For the sick, the lonely, the grieving, and those whose prayers seem unanswered: that they may know the presence of Christ even in their darkest hours.
Lord, hear us and strengthen our faith.
For the faithful departed, especially those who died without the comfort of family or friends: that they may enter the eternal peace of God.
Lord, hear us and strengthen our faith.
For ourselves: that we may never mistake delay for abandonment, nor allow disappointment to harden our hearts against the mercy of God.
Lord, hear us and strengthen our faith.
Our Father
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Concluding Prayer
Almighty and merciful Father, who knowest our needs before we speak and hearest even the prayers we cannot find words to offer, strengthen our hearts in perseverance.
When we grow impatient, teach us trust. When we are discouraged, renew our hope. When the answer we seek is delayed, keep us faithful to Thy goodness.
Grant that we may spend this day in prayer, honest work, charity toward our neighbors, and gratitude for Thy gifts.
Through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
Amen.
Blessing
May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life.
Amen.
The Paradox of the Day
The prayer that seems to accomplish nothing may be the very thing that keeps faith alive.
Chesterton for the Morning
There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable.
— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter IV, “The Ethics of Elfland.”
A Chestertonian Meditation
The Courage to Keep Knocking
There is a peculiar sort of courage required to knock on a door for the second time.
The first knock is easy enough. It may be made with confidence, optimism, or even a cheerful certainty that someone is waiting on the other side. But the second knock comes after silence. The third comes after disappointment. By the tenth, the person knocking has learned something about himself that he might otherwise never have discovered.
He has learned whether he believes there is anyone at home.
This is the curious business at the center of Our Lord’s parable this morning. A widow approaches a judge who is about as unsuitable a judge as could be imagined. He fears neither God nor man, which is a remarkable qualification for a person whose occupation is supposed to involve justice.
The widow, meanwhile, has almost nothing that the world considers useful. She has no influence, no powerful friends, no impressive title, and apparently no money with which to purchase the judge’s attention.
But she has one thing.
She will not go away.
It is tempting to read this story as a lesson in the value of making oneself sufficiently annoying. There are undoubtedly people who have achieved considerable success by this method. The widow herself appears to have understood its possibilities.
But Christ is making a far more astonishing point.
He is not suggesting that God resembles the unjust judge. He is contrasting them. If even a thoroughly indifferent man can eventually be moved to act, how much more confidently may we approach the Father who already loves us?
The widow must persuade the judge to care about justice. We do not have to persuade God to care about us.
And yet we are told to continue praying.
Why?
Perhaps because prayer changes something more important than the circumstances about which we pray.
Perhaps it changes the person who is praying.
Consider the extraordinary promise in this morning’s canticle from Ezekiel. God does not merely promise to improve His people’s circumstances. He promises to give them a new heart.
A heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone.
This is a rather more ambitious undertaking than rearranging the furniture of our lives.
We frequently approach God with a list of necessary improvements. The bills must be paid. The sick must recover. The wandering child must return. The quarrel must end. The uncertain future must become certain.
These are good and proper things for which to pray. Christianity does not require us to pretend that suffering is pleasant or that practical difficulties are unimportant. Our Lord Himself taught us to ask for daily bread.
But God may be accomplishing something in our repeated petitions that we cannot yet see.
The person who prays for patience may discover patience growing slowly through the very difficulty he wishes would disappear. The person who prays for reconciliation may discover that he must first surrender his own pride. The person who prays for courage may find himself called to do the frightening thing before the fear has gone away.
None of this means that suffering is merely a useful lesson, or that unanswered prayers are easily explained. There are sorrows so profound that a clever explanation would be an insult. The mother beside a hospital bed does not need a philosophical lecture. She needs the presence of God, the love of her neighbors, and the freedom to cry out from the depths of her heart.
And the remarkable thing is that Christianity gives her that freedom.
The Psalms are full of questions, complaints, bewilderment, and cries for help. Scripture does not demand that every prayer be cheerful. It demands that we continue speaking to God.
There is a great difference between losing one’s temper with God and losing one’s faith in Him. The first may be the desperate cry of someone who still believes God is listening. The second is the terrible silence in which a man no longer bothers to speak.
The widow never stops speaking.
That is her triumph even before the judge grants her request.
Chesterton understood something important about the strange relationship between love and hope. In Orthodoxy, he observes that the lesson of Beauty and the Beast is that something must sometimes be loved before it becomes lovable.
This is not merely a charming observation about fairy tales. It points toward a profound Christian truth.
We do not love the world because it has already become everything it ought to be. We love it because it is God’s creation, wounded but not abandoned, fallen but not forgotten.
Nor do we persevere in prayer because we can already see the answer. We persevere because we trust the One to whom we pray.
This brings us to another curious feature of the Christian life.
The world generally admires persistence when the object is visible. A businessman works for years to build a company. An athlete trains for a competition. A gardener plants a tree whose shade he may never enjoy.
We call these people determined, disciplined, and admirable.
But when a person kneels every morning and prays for something he cannot yet see, the world may call him foolish.
Yet the two acts are not so different.
Both require the conviction that tomorrow matters. Both involve labor undertaken without an immediate reward. Both depend upon a willingness to act as though the future holds possibilities that the present cannot reveal.
Faith is not the refusal to recognize reality. It is the refusal to believe that the visible portion of reality is all there is.
This morning’s Psalm 91 offers a particularly lovely image of that truth.
The just man is compared to a palm tree, flourishing and bearing fruit even in old age.
A tree does not grow by demanding an immediate explanation of the weather. It receives the rain, endures the wind, and sends its roots deeper into the earth.
Its growth is usually invisible from one day to the next.
And yet it grows.
There is a lesson here for those who have prayed the same prayer for years.
The husband who prays for his wife. The wife who prays for her husband. The parents who pray for a child who has wandered far from home. The elderly person who prays for a world that seems to have forgotten everything he once held dear.
Their prayers are not necessarily wasted because the answer has not arrived.
Indeed, their continued prayer may itself be a sign of extraordinary grace.
We must be careful, however, not to turn perseverance into a transaction. God is not a vending machine into which we insert a sufficient number of prayers until the desired blessing appears.
He is our Father.
And the Father knows things about our lives that we cannot possibly know.
Sometimes His answer is yes. Sometimes it is no. Sometimes it is a long and bewildering silence through which we are asked to walk by faith.
But silence is not the same as absence.
The morning sky provides a useful reminder.
Long before the sun appears above the horizon, the darkness begins to change. The first light is so faint that one might miss it entirely. Then the outlines of trees emerge, the road becomes visible, and the ordinary world returns.
The sun was there before we could see it.
So it is with the mercy of God.
We may spend years waiting for a particular answer while grace is quietly working in places we have not thought to look.
And perhaps that is why Our Lord ends His parable with such an unexpected question.
He does not ask whether the Son of Man will find comfortable people, successful people, or even people whose prayers have all been answered.
He asks whether He will find faith.
The widow’s greatness was not that she possessed the power to compel the judge.
It was that she refused to surrender her hope.
And so, on this ordinary Saturday morning, we return to the ordinary work of faith.
We rise. We give thanks. We attend to our duties. We care for those entrusted to us. We say our prayers.
And if the door has not yet opened, we knock again.
Not because God is reluctant to hear us.
But because we know He is there.
Closing
Lord Jesus Christ, teach us to pray without losing heart. Give us the patience to wait, the courage to act, and the faith to trust Thy goodness even when we cannot see Thy hand.
May our prayers this morning bear fruit in the ordinary duties and quiet acts of love that await us today.
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