Homily: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, RY C
“Be Persistent and Don’t Give Up”
Oct. 16, 2004
by Fr. William Holtzinger

The message is clear in the Scriptures today: Be persistent and don’t give up! First, Moses was so persistent about holding up his hands in supplication to the Lord that he required Aaron and Hur to help him. Next, Psalm 121 reminds us where our ultimate help will come. Then Paul writes to Timothy to tell him to remain faithful to what he has learned and to proclaim the word. We hear, “be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient” (2 Tim. 4:2). And finally, Jesus tells his disciples to pray always with becoming weary. He then goes on to tell them a parable about a persistent widow who won her case because she was persistent.

The idea of being persistent is not a difficult one to believe in some way. Our culture supports it. Think about the movies... how many movies have been made about the underdog being persistent and winning over their adversary? The hardest part is possibly the call not to grow weary or tired or disillusioned. We live in a culture of options and diversity, and it is easy to decide to change to something else when the situation gets tough. Sometimes it may be a good idea. Other times not. Too many people are disillusioned and have lost contact with the vision that God has for them in their lives.

When it comes to our faith life, we are being called be persistent. As parents, you have a difficult job. You try hard to raise you children to become positive members of society. Specifically, when you had your child baptized, you made a promise to raise them in the faith. It is not to hard when they are younger. But when they hit their teen years, it can become more difficult. Sports, friends, or other activities can become the center of their world. And teens, when you think about it, what is the most important thing to you? Is it not one of those things? That’s not unexpected nor unusual. Yet we are told in the Scriptures, and indeed by Jesus himself, not to place anything before him. Now parents and teens, think about it for a moment... what is the most important thing to you? And you spend the most time amidst that most important thing. If it is a sport, you must be persistent in order to get good. The same is true for most things. God wants you to do well and use the gifts that he’s given you. In fact he wants to be there with you in those moments, even more than your parents want to be there. Yet, the world is set against God. In today’s culture, it might be even more accurate to say that the world hates God. The difficult thing is that we are all victims of it in some way or another. The only way to combat it is to be persistent about our beliefs and morals. It may mean that you will find yourself standing against someone you know and care for. That’s where the we come in, the community. We must support those decisions to put our faith first and help each other when that causes suffering for one of our members. We need to create a new Catholic Christian culture where we know that our lives of faith will be supported.

It begins when our children are young. As I said previously, the teens years are most difficult. So we need, as a Church, to remind each other that our faith in the Lord, the one who made everything, the heavens and the earth, is where our source of strength and help will come. And since we are Catholics, we believe that the Eucharist is a key place for that support. As a community, we are also called the Body of Christ, and so we should work at supporting each other in our faith. For parents, you can create that needed culture at home by instilling in your children the priorities of God beyond all else. Instead of letting your soccer schedule dictate your attendance at Mass, shouldn’t you resolve yourselves to turn that around and instill the foundation of your faith to be nonnegotiable and let everything else revolve around it? 1000 years from now, which priority will you
have then? And which priority will you say to yourself that we should all have now? But in order to instill this cultural sensibility, you must have persistence and not give up. There will be times when you struggle and argue with your loved ones. Yet, must it be so rigid that it could be a win-win situation? But, our world does not care about faith, Church, or religion. So, it is a true battlefield.

On the other side, the Church must be persistent in her quest to preach the Gospel. We must stand forth and share with anyone who would hear what true freedom really is. The world has been persistent in telling us that freedom is a license to do what ever we want. We are even told that as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else then it’s okay. The fact is, any behavior that does not live in the light of the Gospel hurts the community, as well as the one who is not living in that light. But, again, persistence is the key. We are creatures of habit and
culture. If we can begin to create an environment that supports those difficult decisions, then the burden will become lighter. If we can help our youngest families to make faith-promoting decisions, then again, their job as parents will become lighter.

In order to live in that light of the Gospel, we must heed the words of Paul to be steadfast in our faith. We must learn and study. We must pray and spend time with Christ so that our souls will be enlightened. Jesus tells us that God will hear our prayers and answer them. So, we must ask the question: are we asking for the will of God or our own? I have wondered why Jesus encourages us to be persistent in prayer. I wonder that it might not be so much so that God will change his mind as it is that we will turn ours. you see, so many of our thoughts are about ourselves and our wants, and few are about what God wants. But through a constant and persistent act of making oneself present to God, how could we not change? So, we need to pray for our young people. We need to pray for our parents. We need to pray for our elderly who might feel alone. We need to pray that our own hearts will turn towards God more and more every day.