Lk 18: 1-8 Pray!

Saturday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time
(Click here for readings)

By SOPHIE DRUFFNER

“Pray always without becoming weary.”

Last spring I joined many prolifers in front of the Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center to pray for the lives of the children which had ended there, and the lives of the mothers, scarred forever. About thirty minutes later, twenty or so teens showed up with signs depicting bloody coat-hangers and started yelling at our group across the street. I looked at their faces. We were perhaps two hundred and they twenty, but they had no idea how much fear I was feeling at that moment. What had I done to hurt them, to cause them this unrestrained anger? Only existed, only prayed.
 

If I had seen them at Walmart, I would have smiled at them. Maybe I had met one of them at soccer camp when I was seven, or maybe one of them had sat across from me in Social Studies class in sixth grade. Perhaps we would have been friends if we had been in another time and place. But that day, they only caused me fear.

It was hard to stand, listening to them. I heard their ignorance in their yells and their hatred in their signs. I knew that they had probably never seen the facts, the statistics, the pictures. They had only had the rhetoric and faulty logic that they had been provided, and had I had the same experience as them, I would have thought the same. But for the grace of God, there am I.
 

“Pray always without becoming weary.” It was hard to stand, and I sank to my knees. The sidewalk provided the support I needed. Around me, adults, children, and teens did the same. And there was true strength in our action.

The Judge.It takes real strength to kneel when no one is kneeling, to pray for the person who hates you because you stand for something. It takes strength to keep asking God for compassion and love, and to remember what Jesus said about our actions on the cross: “They know not what they do.” It often seems that God, just like the judge in the Gospel, doesn’t listen, and our petitions to him are in vain. Miracles are things that happen to other people, and to some of us, God is always “sleeping in.”
 

But I know that he isn’t. He isn’t “sleeping in” or just paying attention to those sparrows he cares so much for because he helps me choose the right words and ace my schoolwork. He made sure I had a sandwich and apple in the car when I saw the homeless man on the street corner. He helped me smile at people I don’t normally smile at, and His love and infinite forgiveness helps me to know that I am safe to confess every last sin in confession. God isn’t my little “helper,” like an elf on my shoulder; instead, he’s my partner, my partner in love for seventeen years.  

And it takes real strength that I rarely have to know that God is there, helping you, loving you, when you see the actions of His Children, still his Children even when we disobey, when we turn on him and forget him. We are not children in the scope of our actions, for few children can build weapons enough to wipe out countries. But we are his children in the origin of our actions, in our pettiness, jealousy, and greed. We are his children because we carry that divine spark that makes us like our Father. We are children because we do not think about our actions or words enough. We must remember that we are only children so that we will have the strength to keep coming back to the good judge again and again, knowing that there is hope for the human race.We must remember that eventually, on Earth or in Heaven, all God’s children will grow up.

Sophie Druffner is a remarkable young lady.  She is a gifted musician and senior at John Paul II Catholic High School.