(Twenty-ninth Sunday of the Year (C): This homily was given on October 18, 1998 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Luke 18: 1-8.)

"When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on the earth?"

At first glance, the last line of today's gospel text from Luke 18 may seem out of place--but it isn't.

The message of the parable is to pray with perseverance and determination--we know that because St. Luke is nice enough to tell us the point even before he tells us the details. Verse 1 reads as follows: "Jesus told his disciples a parable on the necessity of praying always and not losing heart." The story itself concerns a persistent widow who seeks justice from a corrupt judge--and who doesn't give up until she gets it. Now let's be clear about the analogy Jesus gives us here: our Lord is not comparing God the Father to the evil judge; rather, he's setting up a contrast between God and the judge. He's saying: "Look, if an evil judge like this will finally give a persistent woman justice, how much more will God our loving Father respond to us--his children--when we call out to him in our need." Jesus then tells us that the Father will respond to our petitions by giving us "swift justice." Unfortunately, that does not mean that it will be swift by OUR standards. Remember, the Bible says that to God, "one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as a single day." Consequently, the Lord is not promising us perfect justice immediately. He's promising to give us all that we need in our present circumstances--and he's promising us perfect justice in eternity. Then comes the line which at first glance might seem out of place: Jesus says, "But when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on the earth?" I've always found that to be one of the most disturbing lines in the entire Bible. The Lord seems to imply here that when he comes again at the end of time there will be very little faith left in people's hearts. Of course, he doesn't say conclusively that this will be the case; he simply indicates that it's a very strong possibility. But even if we leave aside the issue of whether or not this loss of faith will occur, the question still remains: why did Jesus make this sudden jump in his discourse? Why did he suddenly jump from a discussion on prayer to a remark about weak faith and the end of the world? At first glance, it doesn't seem to follow.

I would say that Jesus made this jump because--in addition to being the Son of God and the Savior of the world--he was also the greatest psychologist who ever lived! You see, our Blessed Lord understood the intricacies of the human mind. He had a complete awareness of how the human psyche operates. Consequently, he understood why many people lose faith and give up on God: it's when their prayers are not immediately answered as they would like them to be! I was reminded of this truth as I celebrated the funeral Mass of 44 year-old Kathy Warner this past Tuesday. As many of you know: in the last 5 years, Kathy's only son was murdered, her only daughter died of cancer--and so did her mother. Now she dies in a freak car accident in a foreign country. How easy it would be for members of her family to say, "What good did all the prayers do? We prayed when we came to Mass every Sunday, and Justin was murdered; we prayed for Jill and Jeanette and they died; we prayed for Kathy and she was killed." And so, because their prayers were not answered as they would have wanted them answered, and because they haven't experienced perfect justice on this side of the grave, the members of this family could be tempted to give up on prayer and lose their faith. Praise God, for the most part that does not seem to have happened. Kathy's husband and many others have remained strong in faith and have persevered in prayer. But others in similar circumstances do turn away from the Lord: they encounter a difficulty in their lives, they pray, things don't work out as they would like them to work out, and they give up on God totally. Perhaps we've all been tempted to take that route at some point in our lives. Which is why the message of this parable about the persistent widow is so important for us to take to heart.