The parable of the persistent widow
Today is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, it is also called World Mission Sunday because the month of October is Mission Month. So whatever is your favorite mission, please don’t forget that this is the month to give it your support. Today’s gospel also comes from the evangelist St. Luke who talks about the parable of the persistent widow, which is a very important lesson for all Christians in persevering with their Christian faith. This is in Luke 18:1-8 whose feast day was last Friday.
“Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
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Let me start this discussion with the last sentence in this gospel when our Lord Jesus Christ said, “However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” I’m a history buff and when I read the history of Christianity starting from the 12 apostles living in Jerusalem up to what is Christianity today, the answer to the query of our Lord depends on which time we should look into. Perhaps when Emperor Constantine embraced Catholicism as the state religion of the Roman Empire, then the faith of humanity on earth began to flourish. Christianity flourished in Europe as we know in the Middle Ages until the Age of the Reformation began in the 1500s.
Then Christianity began its slide towards oblivion until at these times, when people no longer believe in God. Today, liberalism and man’s inhumanity to man has become a human right. This is why abortion is considered a “human right” when in the past it was considered a plain and simple murder punishable by law. But, obviously, people have already dismissed God from their presence, which is why abortion is considered a human right according to many laws. Of course, we know too well that God doesn’t care for human laws, but only divine laws.
But in the parable of the persistent widow, God doesn’t intervene. The widow’s persistence alone leads the judge to act justly even if he really didn’t have to do it. But Jesus indicates that God is the unseen actor. “Will not God grant justice for his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” This is the lesson that Jesus teaches us in today’s gospel about the persistent widow despite the fact that she is a totally powerless and poor person, yet a corrupt and powerful judge would do her the justice that she deserves.
At this point, I would like to believe that Jesus is not assuming that God is like the corrupt judge, that is not what our Lord is telling us, but the point must be that if persistence pays off with a corrupt human of limited power, how much more will it pay off with a just God of infinite power? The purpose of this parable is to encourage all Christians and Catholics to persevere in their faith against all odds.
We cannot right every wrong in the world in our lifetime. But we must never give up hope, and never stop working for the greater good in the midst of the imperfect systems where our work occurs. Legislators, for example, seldom have a choice of voting for a good bill versus a bad bill just like during the time of then President Benigno “PNoy” Aquino III who forced the legislature to adopt the Reproductive Health Bill, which we know is wrong for Catholics.