29th Sunday in OT 2019 - Persistent Prayer

During the 12th and 13th century, a dastardly heresy swept throughout Europe known as Albigensianism. The Albigensians struggled with the reality of evil in the world. They believed in a good Creator God who wants our souls to flourish, but couldn’t understand how that a good God could allow evil and disease and war and suffering in the world.  Many of us perhaps struggle with that same issue, the problem of evil in the world. But the Albigensians fell into heresy when they adopted the belief that in addition to the One God of Spirit and Light and Goodness, there was a second equally powerful God of matter and darkness and evil. The Albigensians claimed that Jesus really wasn’t God, because God couldn’t suffer, he couldn’t really take on flesh, because flesh is evil. They forbade the eating of animals and milk, and condemned marriage and procreation since they believed begetting children meant imprisoning a beautiful pure soul in a prison of flesh. And they denied the sacraments, refusing to believe that the divine would come so close to us. And it’s really remarkable how popular, how rampant this heresy became.

Well, in the early 13th century a brilliant young priest named Dominic Guzman was accompanying his bishop on a diplomatic mission from Spain to Northern Europe. In his travels, Dominic became aware of two enormous challenges for the Church of his time: entire regions of Northern Europe were largely unevangelized, and the Albigensian heresy had spread like wildfire, particularly in France.
When Dominic brought these challenges to the pope’s attention, the pope personally asked Dominic to devote himself to preaching to the Albigensians. Dominic’s initial efforts of preaching were unsuccessful. The Albigensians were unconvinced that God became flesh and died on the cross for our salvation. They were unconvinced that sins could be forgiven through the waters of baptism, that God would became present under the appearance of bread and wine, that the One True God had created this world good.

So Dominic prayed and fasted and did penance, and one day in 1214, Dominic received a heavenly vision, a heavenly visitor, Our Lady appeared to Him and said, “Dear Dominic, do you know what weapon the Most Holy Trinity wants to use to reform the world?...I want you to know that in this kind of warfare the ‘battering ram’ will be the Rosary. So, if you want to reach these hardened souls and win them to God, preach my Rosary!”

And this campaign must have worked. For in my hands I hold a rosary…and have you met any Albigensians lately? Dominic taught the people to pray the Rosary and Europe was converted.
So, why did Our Lady called the Rosary “a Battering Ram”? Because a battering ram is a large beam, sometimes a whole tree, handled by many people, used to open a large gate, or to make an opening in a wall.  It only works with the repetition of blows on the gate or the wall.  Our Lady compares the Rosary to a battering ram: all those rosaries in the hands of so many Christians, all those Hail Marys prayed in order to knock down the gates of hell and defeat demonic heresies.

I tell this story because it is October, the month of the Rosary; we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7. But, also because the praying of the rosary relates to our scripture readings today, on prayer and perseverance.

In the first reading from Exodus we hear how Moses had to persevere in keeping his hands raised during a battle with the Amalekites. As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel was victorious in battle; but when he let his hands down, the Amalekites, Israel’s enemies got the upper hand.
This is a great metaphor for the spiritual life—when we keep our hands raised before God, persevering in prayer, engaging in the works of mercy, victory is won—our souls grow as they are meant to. When we grow lax, lukewarm, and disobedient, our souls diminish.

Similarly, in the Gospel, our Lord praises the widow who perseveres in petitioning the judge for justice. Jesus praises this widow who overcomes—what—being poor, being without husband, having little social status—in persuading the hardened heart of the judge.

The parable certainly reminds us that the Christian life requires perseverance in general. Daily, we must overcome temptations, we must be faithful in the midst of suffering and pressures from the world, we must repent of our sins, we must not giving up working for the conversion of non-believers.

Often in the Gospels the Lord takes up the theme of perseverance, he speaks of the need to carry our crosses daily; He enjoins us to not stop seeking until we find God, to not stop knocking until that door is open, he says though he sends us out as sheep amidst wolves, and will be persecuted even by members of our family, he says, “the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

What will give us the strength to persevere in the Christians life, certainly a prayer life that perseveres. St. Alphonsus Ligouri says, “if, then, we wish to persevere and to be saved—for no one cannot be saved without perseverance—we must pray continually. Our perseverance depends, not on one grace, but on a thousand helps which we hope to obtain from God during our whole lives, that we may be preserved in his grace.” Jesus told his disciples this parable of the persistent widow after all to teach them the necessity of prayer for the spiritual life.

A Particularly powerful prayer in preserving us in perseverance is of course the Holy Rosary. Pope Francis this year called upon “all the faithful of all the world, to pray the Holy Rosary every day” during the Marian month of October, especially during this time of “spiritual turbulence” as he called it. The rosary is not a relic from the past century to be discarded. No, it is a powerful spiritual weapon, that the Holy Trinity wishes us to utilize in the great spiritual battle in which we find ourselves. For though the Albigensian heresy has been defeated, we know plenty of other errors and lukewarmness which separate souls from God.

I’ve taken the liberty of printing up some guides on how to pray the rosary, just in case it’s been a while or you were never taught. They are available at the parking lot Church entrance.
Prayer is powerful. In can win miracles. It can convert hardened hearts. It can bring relief to the sorrowful and light to the confused.

Oremus pro invicem, let us pray for one another, that we may persevere in the Christian life, be strengthened and supported in our weaknesses, and equipped, as St. Paul says, for every good work for the glory of God and salvation of souls.