Luke has done us a great service by telling us what today’s Gospel parable means even before he tells us the parable. Before Luke tells us about the widow who had suffered some injustice and kept pestering the uncaring judge to give her justice, Luke tells us the parable is about the necessity of praying always and not becoming weary. So we are to take two lessons from the parable: to keep praying during a time of suffering and secondly not to become weary while praying, in other words, not to lose heart or become discouraged during suffering but to keep up one’s spirits.
There was no social security at the time of Jesus and that poor widow really was a poor widow. She had no inheritance rights, and everything went to the nearest male relative. She was completely dependent on others. She had suffered an injustice of some kind. The judge was completely uncaring but eventually decided to give her justice just to get her off his back. Jesus uses that to teach about God responding to our prayer. That uncaring judge responded to the woman and God will not abandon us. If the judge who was uncaring could be moved by the woman’s pleas, how much more is God moved by our pleas.
During the time when we are waiting for an answer from God, we are to keep praying and not become weary or discouraged. In other words, we are not to lose our faith when bad things happen. And that is precisely why Jesus says after the parable, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8) Remain strong in faith when challenges and disappointments and knocks and crosses come our way so that when Jesus calls us to the next life, we will be strong in faith.
There are many examples in the lives of the saints of remaining strong in faith and not growing weary while praying when bad things happened or while they were waiting for an answer to their prayers. Saint Monica was praying for nearly two decades before her son Saint Augustine converted in 386. She was so upset over Augustine that she spoke to a bishop about him and wanted the bishop to speak to Augustine about the error of his ways as the bishop had done with others. The bishop answered that Augustine was unteachable but like the widow in today’s parable Monica persisted and pleaded with the bishop. He responded, “Go away now; but hold on to this: it is inconceivable that he should perish, a son of tears like yours.” (Confessions III 12, 21) The bishop was right. Augustine converted later and wrote in his autobiography, Confessions, about God answering his mother’s prayers for him:
You stretched out your hand from on high and pulled my soul out of these murky depths because my mother, who was faithful to you, was weeping for me more bitterly than ever mothers wept for the bodily death of their children. In her faith, and in the spiritual discernment she possessed by your gift, she regarded me as dead; and you heard her, O Lord, you heard her and did not scorn those tears of hers which gushed forth and watered the ground beneath her eyes wherever she prayed. Yes, you did indeed hear her. (Confessions Book III 11, 19.)
St. Augustine’s tomb is in a church in Pavia in Italy, but St. Monica’s tomb is in a side chapel in the Basilica of St. Augustine in Rome. Whenever I am in Rome, I go there to pray for all mothers who are suffering for their children that, like the widow in today’s parable, they may have the grace of persevering in prayer without becoming weary.
Another example of remaining strong in faith is St. Oliver Plunket (also spelt Plunkett) during enormous persecution of the faith here. He came back to Ireland in 1670 as archbishop of Armagh after teaching in Rome. Renewed anti-Catholic persecution took hold in 1673. He saw Catholic life all around him suppressed and many priests exiled when Catholic clergy were expelled from Ireland in 1678. St. Oliver Plunket remained in hiding and traveled in disguise. He was arrested in 1679 because of a conspiracy theory that he was plotting to bring French soldiers to invade Ireland. His trial had to be moved from Dublin Castle to London in order to ensure that there would be people who would testify against him. He was denied legal counsel and not given time to bring defense witnesses from Ireland. He was found guilty of treason and the chief justice said “the bottom of your treason was your setting up your false religion” which makes it look like his chief crime was that he was a Catholic archbishop. He was executed at the gallows in Tyburn, London, on July 1, 1681, and his last words were of thanks to God. He was the last of 342 martyrs for the Catholic faith in a century and a half from the time of Henry VIII. Unlike the widow in today’s parable and St. Monica, St. Oliver Plunket did not see a favorable outcome to his situation or that of the Church under persecution, but he remained strong in faith and did not grow weary as his last words were “Deo Gratias,” “Thanks be to God.” Jesus asked, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” St. Oliver Plunket had faith when he met the Son of Man at Tyburn in London and uttered, “Deo Gratias.”
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2025
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday Year C
Waiting in Prayer for God’s Answer 2022
The Parable of the Persistent Widow: Persevere in Prayer 2010
Related Homilies: Homilies on Prayer
stories about persistence