Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Today, we read in our Office Gospel the parable of the Unjust Judge: a woman implacably seeks justice from an indifferent judge who, because of the annoyingly unrelenting constancy of the woman's suit, grants her justice in order to get her off his back.

The context of the parable is given at the top of our reading, “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not lose heart.” And it might seem odd that what follows is a story about a persistent suitor who annoys a neglectful judge into actually doing his job. So…is Jesus trying to tell us that God doesn’t actually desire the good of God’s people until God’s bothered enough to act, and then doesn’t actually act for the sake of the good, but for the sake of the relief that would result from granting an insistent request for the good?

O Beloved, not at all! Jesus is not for a moment suggesting that God needs persuading in order to grant justice or any other actual good. God desires the good for us all the time! Gratuitously, endlessly, lovingly, righteously, God pours God’s blessings on all of creation and accomplishes the good God wills according to God’s gracious purposes. Rather than being about God’s willingness to give the good, this parable is about our unwillingness to ask for it.

It’s as if Jesus is saying, “You’re willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want, and you won’t lose heart even when you know or suspect a system is rigged against you: you keep going and pursue the good you desire! So why would you lose heart when approaching One who actually desires to do good to you, by you, and through you? Why wouldn’t you constantly seek the good from such a One whom you know is faithful to give the good, and real goods at that: goods like justice, truth, mercy, forgiveness, grace, and all from the abundance of that One’s love for you! Why wouldn’t you continue in prayer to such a One for such goods? Because I tell you: the One who is Good is faithful to do good…but are you faithful in asking for it or in receiving it?”

That, I think, is the point of Jesus’ enigmatic coda to the story: “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” The faithfulness that Jesus desires us to have is trust in the goodness of God so that we can actually receive, at God’s own hands, the goodness God always already desires to give us.

So often, in our desperation for things that we’ve identified as good (and let’s face it, they may or may not actually be good, or they may not be needful goods), we confuse the Good God with the Unjust Judge. If we persist in our prayers, we often do so because we fear we’re not being heard, or that God needs convincing to give us what we want. Jesus is asking us today to consider: if we can manage to ask for a good, what might happen if we actually trusted the One we asked to give us even (and especially!) the goods for which we either cannot or dare not ask, and in a way that is good, and at a time that is good? What might happen if we persisted in our prayer, trusting that whatever we prayed for (even if we prayed for a lesser good), God would use our prayer to shape our desire to conform to the real and true goods that God desires to give us…and even fit us, by grace, to receive them?

Dear Friend! What might happen—or, better: Who might we become—if we actually trusted that God is persistently faithful in God’s goodness, if we prayed persistently from that trust and not as if to a heedless far-away deity, but as to a Beloved Friend on whom we can indefatigably rely not only to give us all the goods we need and can imagine, but to give us the unimaginable fullness of the Divine Goodness itself?

Or to put it another way—perhaps more appropriate to today's Feast of Corpus Christi in which we celebrate the Mystery of the Eucharist and how Jesus remains really and substantially present to us in the Blessed Sacrament—we might ask ourselves: how am I being invited to trust fully in the faithfulness of the One who not only desires good for me, but is willing to nourish and feed me with his own precious Body and Blood, in which the fullness of the Good dwells?

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+