PRAYER - A CLAIM FOR JUSTICE.

TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME. YEAR C.
October 21, 2007.
(First Reading: Exodus 17:8-13) (Psalm: 121:1-8)
(Second Reading: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2) (Gospel Reading: Luke 18:1-8)

PRAYER - A CLAIM
FOR JUSTICE.

To those who pray to God, "he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily" (Luke 18:8), so does Jesus reassure us in the gospel.

Our prayer is a claim for justice, a claim for restoration of what we have lost.
Prayer - this claim for justice - is the result of the following process:
1. Knowledge of our human nature. The process begins with an understanding of our human nature, with a knowledge of who we are. In the gospel Jesus reminds us that we are: God's "chosen ones" (Luke 18:7), children of God and as such called to live in peace, mutual respect and harmony with one another, called to live as people who equally share all their possessions for their common good.

Psalm 121 reminds us that we, human beings, have one Father "the maker of heaven and earth [who] will always guard our life... both now and forever" (Psalm 121:8).

2. Awareness of a loss. We must be keenly conscious of the fact that we, by our own actions, have lost what is ours, that we have lost our condition of being children of God. We must be profoundly aware that that loss makes us incomplete human beings.

The divisions and mutual destruction among human beings in our world demonstrate that we have lost our condition of being children of God. Human beings are divided into those who are powerful and those who are weak, those who possess all the wealth and those who possess nothing, those who live in abundance and those who starve to death, those who use their weapons and those who are killed.

3. Awareness of the need to restore what we have lost, to restore our wholeness.
The gospel presents a widow who in the awareness of her weakness and need claims her right to justice; and justice is granted to her. The poor, the weak, the suffering, the oppressed must be aware that the powerful and oppressors of the world have destroyed our human dignity of being children of God; and that we must claim our right to justice, to restore what we have destroyed(1).

4. Total response. The fourth step in the process of prayer is a response with the totality of our being, with the involvement of our entire life, with our whole mind and heart. Our motivation to restore our lost dignity of being children of God must be a wholehearted one. The fact of having lost our dignity of children of God becomes indeed a deeply painful experience, but our commitment to restore such dignity is a source of enthusiasm.

The gospel describes a widow who had made a total response to her belief that she has a just cause, and persistently and for a long time she presents her claim before a dishonest judge. The widow's commitment did not diminish in the face of the adverse circumstances.

5. The claim for justice is presented to God through Christ Jesus who has become one of us by taking on our human nature in order to redeem us. Therefore, since God is already in our midst, our prayer works from within the human race, from within each human being, restoring our individual and collective dignity of being children of God.

At this stage, our prayer for justice is the voice not only of the person who prays, but it also is the voice of God himself living in us. In other words, the claim contained in our prayer is the same as God's claim for justice(2).

Saint Paul in his Second Letter to Timothy reaffirms that we have learned to pray from Jesus himself. Says Paul "You must remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you have learned it... [from] Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:14).

6. Finally, our prayer is persistently presented by word and deed to God. The persistency is the fruit of our uncompromising faith in God who will bring to fruition our efforts to restore our human dignity. Our tireless prayers - and actions - are the expressions of God living in us, guiding us toward the restoration of our dignity.

The widow persistently and tirelessly asked for justice until justice is done to her.

Paul encourages us to be persistent both in prayer and in action when he says: "Be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient" (2 Timothy 4:2).

In a world of profound divisions and mutual destruction among human beings, in a world where human beings have lost sense of their dignity of being children of God, the Lord Jesus strengthens our faith by reassuring us that God will speedily grant us justice, that God will grant us the restoration of our dignity of being children of God. Today we are asking God to grant us what in his justice is our right(3).

Our prayer is a claim for justice.
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FOOTNOTES.
(1) The gospel presents a widow as the one who asks for justice, for she is weak and helpless. The powerful of the world do not ask for justice - they make their own "justice" by forcefully imposing their oppression upon weak and helpless human beings.
(2) Jesus himself by his words and deeds demonstrates that he is the one who truly wants us to recuperate what we have lost; Jesus wants us to live in a world in which all human beings relate to one another as children of God, with mutual respect, in peace and harmony. Indeed, Jesus is our prayer made flesh. Now that the Son of Man is among us "will he find faith on earth?" (Luke 18:8). As we answer the question, we may respond: "Our prayer - our claim for justice - is an act of faith".
(3) Our prayer is a claim for a world where there are no oppressors nor oppressed; where every power or authority only exists to be placed at the service of all human beings; where the wealth of the earth is used for the well-being of all mankind; where differences are addressed by dialogue not by destruction; where human beings live in peace not in war.