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Today's Gospel
Never Lose Heart
4 min
Gospel
Lk 18:1-8
And he told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Vindicate me against my adversary.’ For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Readings are from Dynamic Catholic’s New Testament Bible: RSV Catholic Edition
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Transcript
Never Lose Heart
What jumped out at you? Is there a word or phrase or an idea? For me, it's this idea that this widow, she's got her case, she keeps making her case. She keeps coming to the judge. And finally, the judge is like, "I can't do this every day. Got to get this woman out of my hair." So he vindicates her. What's the lesson that Jesus is giving us? We're told in the beginning, Jesus told a parable to the effect that they ought to always pray and never lose heart. That they might always pray and never lose heart. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful line.
Two things, right? One is there's a connection between those two things. Usually, when we lose heart, we have stopped praying. Usually, when we lose heart, our routine of prayer has been disrupted. And it's easy for us to lose heart when we're not praying. I see this a lot in ministry. I remember meeting this great couple about 10 years ago. They're doing amazing work in their parish. Amazing work with the young people, extraordinary. And I could tell they're a little discouraged. And I'm like, "Never get discouraged. If you get discouraged, I want to be on speed dial. You get discouraged, you call me. Because that's the devil right there. People doing good work and feeling discouraged. That is not good. There are evil spirits in this world, and they are at work, and they are at work in a situation like that."
The other thing is, I always think of the Holy Spirit as the great encourager. I've written about that in different places, but I just, for whatever reason—we all have images of God, right? We all see God in different ways. We see the Father in different ways. We see the Son in different ways. And we see the Holy Spirit in different ways. And for some reason, I always felt like the Holy Spirit's a great encourager. And being filled with the Holy Spirit is being sent out into the world to be a great encourager. So let's pray, always pray, and not lose heart, as the introduction says. And let's be great encouragers, especially where we see good people beginning to lose heart.
Have a great day. And remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.
