A Reflection for Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
I guess you can’t actually stop me if you’ve heard this story before, but Luke’s parable of the persistent widow is one of my favorites, not only because she is a role model for all women, but because of the way she once spoke to one of my teenage daughters. During a mild confrontation about something, a later curfew or a radical piercing or a questionable concert my daughter wanted me to allow, and for which I was leaning toward denying permission, she said in her calmest voice, “I’m not going to give up, Mom. I’m the persistent widow.”
That caught me off guard. That had been the Gospel and homily that I assumed she had not been listening to on Sunday. But she had heard and understood the lesson. Now she was turning to her favor the fact that I was still making her go to Mass with the family, and casting me as the crooked judge. Well played, child of mine. Well played.
We know the only way to walk is forward, toward justice, and the only way to pray is, as Jesus tells us with his parable, “without becoming weary.”
We women know all about the value of persistence, especially in a world run by men. If you’ve ever worked in a male-led job setting (like, say, a parish office), you know the exhausting necessity of persisting in order to be heard, much less heeded. I am not saying that men accustomed to heading a hierarchy “neither fear God nor respect any human being,” but it can be massively frustrating to have to pitch your voice loudly and continually enough to express your ideas or dissent. Sometimes it seems easier to give up, to let the issue go, to turn back from the uphill climb. Nevertheless, we know we must persist. We know we have to keep bothering the judge. We know the only way to walk is forward, toward justice, and the only way to pray is, as Jesus tells us with his parable, “without becoming weary.” In fact, from the very beginnings of our one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, was it not the persistence of women—of the woman miraculously with child, of the women at the foot of the cross, of the women at the empty tomb—that spread the Good News?
“Blessed the man who fears the Lord,” says Psalm 112 in today’s response. Blessed are those who, unlike the local judge, fear God and respect every human being. And blessed the women who, like this widow, persist.
