In each of our families, we have stories of perseverance. The one my aunts liked to tell about my grandfather Walter, a Swiss immigrant, was how he attempted to homestead a section of land west of the Missouri river in South Dakota. His two oldest daughters were born in a dugout sod cabin there. His only son was born in a ditch on the side of the road when the wagon carrying my grandmother turned over and induced labor. Around Zell, South Dakota, he was remembered as the Peter kid that was born in the ditch.
Walter was a man of faith. He told my mom that he road on horseback to get to town so that he could go to mass. He arrived after midnight and was tired and thirsty, so he had to have a drink of water. The Eucharistic fast used to forbid drinking water after midnight and before mass. He tried to make a confession to the priest before mass, was refused and so he couldn’t go to communion that Sunday after his long ride in the dark. Some people get angry being treated like that, but not my grandfather. My dad said that when he first met Walter after he married mom, he got up in the middle of the night to go to the outhouse and stumbled over Walter saying his rosary, kneeling by a statue of our Blessed Lady in the dark of the hall. You don’t get far in life without perseverance.
When the gospel today tells us that the unjust judge, a man so confident in his power that he feared neither God nor man, was afraid that the little old widow would wear him out. Actually, the literal translation is that the judge was afraid of the little old lady that she would “punch him in the eye.” Jesus meant this as a comic story about the power of prayer and the importance of perseverance in prayer. In addition to instructing us to pray constantly, Jesus assures us that justice will be done. He wondered, however, whether people will persevere in faith.
We get nowhere in life without perseverance. Marriage, family, friendship and careers can have discouraging and unjust moments. You have to keep slugging away. Sometimes we all need help. Moses was praying for his people during a big battle. He needed help to keep praying and so two friends helped by holding his hands up towards heaven. That is why it is such a good thing to ask others to remember your family in their prayers.
I think the surest sign that we need to persevere is when we feel discouraged. Mostly, people fail in prayer when we get so busy or self-absorbed that we don’t even think about it. We can also, unfortunately, feel like nobody is listening anyway. I think the most important examples of prayer are the ones we observe in our own lives. Dad used to attend daily mass and pray the rosary on his way to work. Mom prayed the rosary daily and went to daily mass. They had eight kids and a lot to pray for. I know that when I pray there are coincidences in my life. When I don’t pray, there are no coincidences. I don’t think it is a coincidence that with the example of my parents that I became a priest. Perhaps the power of prayer is found, in part, in the example of perseverance.