Why pray?

Readings

Here's a test for preaching this week: Did whoever you heard preach take as a starting point what the Gospel tells us the readings are about? "Jesus told his disciples a parable "about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary"?

If not, I would question that person's approach to preaching and whether they are really committed to expounding the scriptures or if they're intent on riding hobby horses. Frankly, a lot of preaching amounts to such an equestrian event.

I've been re-reading Louis-Marie Chauvet's outstanding book The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body. Along with Jean Corbon's The Wellspring of Worship, it is the best book of sacramental theology I've ever read. Early in the book, which is an abbreviated version of his magnum opus Symbol & Sacrament, he writes brilliantly, drawing from the Church Fathers, on word and sacrament and the role preaching plays in this dynamic.

Commenting on Origen's view of preaching, Chauvet writes: "he does not hesitate to compare the homily to the multiplication of loaves." Then quoting Origen, he writes: "Consider...now how we break a few loaves: we take up a few words from the divine Scriptures and... many thousand men are filled." Origen, who remains an unparalleled master of Scripture, goes on write that "unless the loaves have been broken, unless they have been crumbled into pieces by the disciples... unless the letter has been discussed and broken in little pieces, its meaning cannot reach everyone" all from page 44).

In my view, a serious lack in the current Eucharistic Revival is the sacramentality of the word as it relates to the Eucharist. According to the Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Christ is really present in the proclamation of the scriptures (sec. 7). Even the bread and wine become for us the body and blood of Christ through the words of Eucharistic Prayer- word becoming flesh. Without the word, there is no sacrament.

I love the analogy of the scriptures proclaimed as the loaf and the homily as the sharing of the one bread. It is by analogy that we come to understand the mystery of faith, is it not? We cannot access this mystery in an immediate way. It is always mediated. Sacraments are mediations, which means they are both sign and symbol. If sacrament is sign and symbol- though signs of particular type- they're empty gestures, mere rituals that signify nothing.

Given that the kind of prayer Jesus is clearly talking about is petitionary prayer (i.e., the kind of prayer that asks things from God), it's fair to ask- How do I pray and not grow weary? Another question that seems almost inevitable in light of this teaching- Will God answer my prayer(s) only because he grows weary of hearing me ask? In other words, Do I need to wear down God like the widow wore down the horrible judge? Look at what Luke writes- the judge granted the widow's request because he was worried about her "striking" him. As I practicing proclaiming this before Mass yesterday, this struck me as funny. I think sometimes Jesus injected a wry humor in his teaching. At least I hope he did.

While I am not sure there are definitive answers to such questions, which makes these questions all the more important, two observations strike me as relevant. The first is to note that throughout this parable what the widow is seeking to be vindcated against an unnamed adversary in an unspecified dispute. She is is only asking the judge to do what he ought to do, to do his job. In verse 5 of Luke 18, where, in our translation (the NABRE) the judge decides to "deliver a just decision for her," the Greek word translated as "just" ἐκδικέω (transliterated = ekdikeō), in this context means to vindicate her. This same word is used in verse 3, where the widow demands the judge "Render a just decision for me against my adversary."

We are vindicated through Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection are the key to interpretiting the whole of Scripture. The Paschal Mystery is the very core of reality that we seek not just know, or even merely to understand, but to live, be immersed into. Observing this not only indicates that, in and through Christ, we are always already vindicated against our adversary, it also indicates God's method of vindication, or how God answers our prayers. Doesn't the widow herself undergo a kind of passion in seeking vindication?

While Luke gives us a parable and is even explicit about what it teaches, we tend allegorize every parable and every element of every parable. To say something is "like" something else is precisely not to posit an exact identity. Say what? Cutting to the chase, while we should bring our petitions to God without ceasing, crying out to him for ourselves and for others, we are not petitioning an asshat of a judge. Just as Jesus did not allegorize the master of the unjust steward as the Father, in our Gospel today he does not teach that God [, the Father] is "like" the despicable judge. Verse 7, which could begin with the words "How much more, then, will God vindicate...," indicates that no allegory is intended in that regard.

Again, our vindication is the one on whose lips Luke places this parable. How much more, then, should we heed his exhortation to pray to God without growing weary? We don't grow weary because because what we truly seek, want, and need is already ours.

So, should we pray because the answer to our all prayers tells us to pray? Rather than trot out the tired quote by Kierkegaard about how the point of prayer is to change the one who prays, an observation with which I agree, I am going to dig a bit deeper.

I think Kierkegaard answers this question very well, in light of the vindication that is already ours, giving us good reason to pray to God without growing weary:

[God] lets me weep before him in silent solitude, pour forth again and again pour forth my pain, with the blessed consolation of knowing that he is concerned for me—and in the meanwhile he gives that life of pain a significance which almost overwhelms me (Journals VIII1 A, 650)