Welcome to the Catholic Influencers Podcast where we go deeper into Sunday's gospel reading to help you influence the world for Jesus. I'm Danii Sullivan.
I'm Fr Rob Galea. And this podcast is presented to you by FRG ministry.
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. How are you doing Danielle?
I am well Fr. Rob. With a beautiful morning. We're working on a Saturday. Yeah. Which is regular for you. You have all kinds of crazy hours for me though. Yeah. This is your sleep in and it's like 9:00 AM and we're already in the office maybe past 9:00 AM now, But it's okay. But you came into the office with coffee. How grateful I am for that. You're welcome. It was a beautiful morning. I was taking my dog out for a walk and the sun was shining, but it was like spitting rain.
It was so nice, annoying 'cause then she smelled like wet dog, but it was just like a beautiful morning. And then I got to go in my car and it was dry and get coffee. Oh, very nice. And where's your dog this morning we would seem to always talk about dogs, but anyway, where's the dog this morning? The dog, she is at my home. So you're going to go home and your house is going to smell like wet dog. I'm looking forward to it, but no , we're in the office for a few hours today.
So hopefully by the time I get home she smells fine. And this evening I begin Mass as well. The weekend Masses. I, this is one thing I love. I love being in a parish and I travel lot get to travel around, but I look forward always , I actually get excited to spend time with the parishes. So, and then tomorrow we have more masses and then as an FRG ministry team, we have a big outreach tomorrow. So we're very excited about that too. What a weekend. What a weekend.
So, yeah, we love, we love what we do, we love that we get to do what we do. But today we talking about something exciting about beautiful gift of prayer and prayer, which is always a struggle or is a wrestle. And some days are more difficult than others. How do you find prayer, Danii? You struggle with prayer. Do you , you like, you're really disciplined with your prayer? No, I definitely struggle. This is something that me and my spiritual director talk about every month.
He's like, so Danii, how have you been, and I think every month my answer is just like inconsistent. That's probably the best way to describe my prayer. As you're saying, like sometimes I'm like, yeah , this is great. I can get a daily rosary out and also go to daily mass. And then there's other weeks where I'm like... Oh, I haven't done that for a few days. Yeah like oh where are my rosary has been and then all of a sudden they're gone.
Like, so yeah, I think that, you know, depending on mood and circumstance and things like... Circumstance [laughing] mood and circumstance, yeah. Circumstance, it fluctuates and then also like when there's something in particular that you're petitioning for, like then all of a sudden they have like this new fervour. I'm like yeah, absolutely I'm going to pray every minute, every day for this intention.
And then when God answers that or when you know, maybe it's no longer something that I need to pray about petition for, then it just kind of goes back down. So, inconsistent.
But how good it is to have something to pray for and to have a desire to pray for. And usually it's at the tough times times where you , there are things that you need to pray for that are not so necessarily so good. But the one thing I found as well is in consistency with prayers , finding a prayer corner. This is something that I'm discovering more and more like having just the corner, which is entirely, not everyone has the luxury to do that, but just have a corner entirely for prayer.
And so getting up and coming to that corner, to that place first thing in the morning, I wake up, I go to this corner and in my hand I have my, my vital greens. So I have a powder with , with the veggies, like with vegetables and that's the first thing I have. I'm sitting down, I'm praying and I'm speaking to God with my vital greens .
I do something similar, but I have these beautiful chair in my house, and it's like my favourite chair in the whole world, and I sit there, but I have coffee and instead.
Coffee is good. I have my coffee a bit later because I think, yeah, anyway, I want to feed my body good, good stuff.
But like this whole like petition thing when you've got a sign and pray for it , that's so important. And I think that my friends, I'm really blessed with them is that we like unashamedly just message each other as soon as, you know, as soon as something good happens, as soon as we're struggling with something or you know, we're waiting for results or whatever it might be, there's just like this prayer tree message that just goes out to everyone.
And even one of my best friends at the moment is in Uganda. She's a missionary over there. So there's lots of things that just, she needs prayer constantly. Like it's all in God's hands because there's so much going on. So every week we send an intention to each other. And that's, you know, it's something that we really intentionally decided when she got on the plane where like every week we have to pray for each other with purpose.
And that's, that's such community. And my mum does something similar. She has a group as well like that. She leads one of the leadership of a women's only prayer group. So they're all m amas, they're all mum. And so when one of the children need prayer, like all the m amas put it on Facebook and they're all praying. And occasionally when it's a big need, I get forwarded the message, sort of o ffer this, pray for this at mass, please.
And it's just par and also today we're g oing t o talk about persistence. And I think one of the beautiful persistence is in my mama, I see the way she prayed for me, but also the way she's persistent with me, patient with me. Like for example, let me give y ou an example. I'm heading off to Malta, u m, later on and my intention was to go to Malta to rest. I'm g oing t o go f or five, six, maybe seven days. I'm going with another priest friend of mine.
And I, we planned everything and I said to my priest friend that w e're going to have holidays, they're g oing t o do this, this, b ut then my mom comes with her persistence, can you come and speak at this prayer group? Can you go and pray with this person, can you celebrate this mass? And I say, no, ma, I'm on holiday, I'm on holiday. But she doesn't say anything. But the next week she'd say, 'look, what h ave you just spoke at this group and this group'.
And so somehow it's just the power of persistence and but persistence in a loving and a patient way. U m, and I just found, yeah, I g ive i n so quickly to my mama. You do find that like w ith family?
Yeah, I gave in really quickly to your mum as well. To my mum? [laughing] She prayed for me actually while I was there. So I stayed with your family in Malta earlier this year, which was beautiful. And there was a day that I wasn't feeling well. So I stayed in your home, which was nice. And your mum was there and she actually had this prayer group over in the morning.
And then in the afternoon she came and prayed with me and then, you know, kind of wrapped up that prayer , she was like, Hmm , no, I'm not done yet. And just like went back and just kept praying like that persistence was really the evident. She was like, I'm not going to stop yet. I don't like, it's not time. Like we're going to keep praying together so that was so beautiful.
And this is one of the things that will come out in today's scripture. And even though this seems to be small talk, but this is what the gospel is about. It's kind of coming to this place of persistent prayer that changes us, not changes God. And then we'll talk about this, but maybe Danii shall we go into the gospel reading of today. So it's eight verses. So it's this Sunday's gospel, Luke 18:1-8
"And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said in a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded men. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him saying , vindicate me against my adversary. For a while he refused. But afterward he said to himself, though, I neither fear God nor regard man yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her or she will wear me out by her continual coming.
And the Lord said, hear what the unrighteous judge says and will not God vindicate his elect who cried to him day and night where he delay long over them. I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
So this is a beautiful gospel message about prayer and perseverance. And there are two major characters in this Bible verse, but a thing that happens throughout the scriptures, whether it's especially the gospels , is whenever prayer is talked about, it's talked about in the perspective of perseverance. One verse I'm thinking about at the moment is Matthew 77 we read it: ask and you shall receive, seek and ye shall find knock and the door will be open to you.
But the actual translation is keep on asking and you will receive, keep on seeking and you will find, keep on knocking and the door will be open to you. So when it comes to prayer, it's not only about praying for something and then walking away, it's about being consistent about knocking at the door. And don't stop knocking until you get some answer. Get not necessarily the answer you want, but to keep knocking and keep on asking.
And so here we have two characters, we have the judge and we have the widow. And let's start maybe with the judge, the judge in the time we know was not a Jewish judge. And there weren't any Jewish judges. So when there was a dispute the people would go to the elders that go to the elders and they would settle it. A lot of them, the Muslim people do that as well. They don't have, they don't go to the judicial system. They go straight to their elders and the Jews do that as well.
So when there's a dispute, they don't go to the law courts or to anything public. But they sit down with the elders and then the elders through prayer, through intercession, through wisdom, through knowing the culture, knowing the person, knowing the family can make that judgment . And so we know that this person has gone to this judge and now these judges were people appointed by Herod or the Romans and they were known to be corrupt people.
They were known to be people who take bribes, another word that they would use for them is rubber judges. They were thieves. And so they were appointed there . They were notorious for, for bringing about so to speak justice if you paid for it through bribes.
And so you have this person, the second character who is a widow who has absolutely nothing and there's a symbol of poverty and defenselessness and voicelessness and so therefore she has no absolutely no hope of justice, no hope of pain for her justice.
So yeah back in the day, the man, the husband or the brother or the father, whoever it was, would provide for a woman. So this woman, a widow, doesn't have that. She doesn't have anyone to provide for her. She has no social standing or anything like that. She is so vulnerable and as you're saying Fr Rob like she can't pay for this justice. She's one of the lowest in society.
And yet she keeps coming to this judge who isn't known to be merciful or kind, but she keeps persistently going to him and asking for this justice.
She comes to this plays, but this judge is afraid of her. Why do you think he's afraid of her?
She keeps coming to him and he is worried that she's going to wear him out. But in another translation that actually means, well the same word means to strike. So he's pretty much just scared he's going to get a black eye.
Yeah, that's right. So the same word for exhaust or wear out is the same word as give me a black eye to strike me. And, and the way it was struck was- you struck with the back of your hand and boom, he was fearful of her but fearful of her persistence and eventually the persistence that might escalate to violence. So he decided to give in and because of her persistent , if she asked once- no, nothing, but because of that she had one weapon, she had nothing except this one weapon.
And this one weapon is persistence and this is all weapon. We also have now, it's not to say that God is likening his being likened to the unjust judge, but being contrasted to this judge.
I think that's one really interesting thing about this parable is because in the other parables, the way I've read throughout Luke's gospel and in the other gospel as well, like there's the shepherd, there's the woman's searching, there's so many parables where you know God is one of the characters. Whereas in this he's not, he's the opposite of one of the characters.
And so what the parable is saying that you need to persist in prayer. You need to persist on . I wrote this in my book as well and, and this is one thing that I saw again to come back to my mama to come back to my, my mum she continuously prayed for me and she, when she saw me in my addiction, when she saw me in my , um , sort of a depression as a teenager, she would, she would kneel outside my locked room and she would pray for me. But I kept getting worse.
I just kept getting worse and worse and worse . But she didn't give up. She continued to pray, she continued to kneel down. She continued to cry out to God. And I am here today because of her persistence, not because of only her prayer, but because of her persistent prayer that she never gave up on me even when things weren't going the way she wanted or ,
and I think that would've been so hard. Not only for your mum . Yes, it would have been hard. But so many others that pray with this persistence is that things don't get better. As you know, as soon as you start praying and as you were saying with your mum in that example there like things got worse before they got better. So that faith that she had to keep praying and keep praying for the same intention, even though it looked like the opposite was happening.
Exactly. And that's faith. They , like you said, you just said it's faith and trust in God and this is what persistence is about. It's an act of holding on. It's an act of perseverance and act of saying, God, I know you're not answering my prayer right now. I know things are not going the way I should and I have prayed, but I'm gonna continue praying cause I'm going to continue trusting in your timing. I want to continue trusting in your answer.
It's a really interesting thing that you just said about timing, their lack because we, we know the passage of time, we know that 24 hours is one day and that 50 years is 5o years. But God is outside of that time. So when we say like, you know, it's taking long for God to answer us or we need a, you know, whatever it might be a deadline for this prayer intention, whatever it is, you know, we want to pray beforehand. Like God isn't bound to that time as we understand it.
So it's so important to gotta hold onto that in our persistence. Like it may not look like God is answering it, but he is answering it either yes or something better is coming along. But it's always in his timing, which is like we can't grasp
and we, we are in space and time. He's not, that's, that's true. But also it doesn't. When we persist, even when we pray, it doesn't mean that we were going to get what we want when we want. And just because you persist doesn't mean you're going to get the answer the way you want the answer. But I think this is one of the things that we need to understand about prayer. Prayer is not about forcing the hand of God.
It's not about changing God's mind, it's all about changing God's heart, but ultimately prayer's about changing us. If we persist in prayer, we rather than bringing God into our space and our time and our reasoning, we step in to the heart, the mind and the will of God. And so as we continue to pray, as we continue to persist, we begin to surrender. We begin to trust, and as we begin to surrender and trust, then as prayer starts to change us, that's where answers begin.
And like a , a parent who doesn't necessarily give a child everything they ask for because they see things from a different perspective, they see things as a whole. They see things from life that is past, present and future. But a child tends to see things in the moment and want things in the moment. So that's what prayer does. God pray. It gives us a bigger perspective. It gives us God's perspective.
And again that is why we shouldn't be discouraged in prayer because you see God does have a bigger perspective. God does see things differently to us. And as we do that, as we do that our hearts are changed and as a result our circumstances also our prayers are answered
and prayers are answered not always in the way that we expect. And I think that like how much more so will your heavenly father give good things to those who ask him and then ask him persistently. But that like more so that giving more is unfathomable to us and it doesn't always look like we think it will look like and when we pray for a particular intention, like if that's not God's will.
And I think we were talking about this before, like you know, making sure that in our prayer, in this petition, in this persistent , we always remember like in Lord's prayer like thy will be done. Like , how important is that? Like yes, in your timing, Lord. And if it's your will only, but then when he does answer any wants to 'cause he's not this judge. He isn't. It says this judge doesn't have regard for man. God has regard for us. He loves us. So how much more so will he give us?
And that more is just so incredible. Like I can't even begin to understand how big that must be and it may not look like I want it to look like or what I think it will look like but it is more than I deserve and it's more than I can comprehend.
And yes, coming to that place of, of not necessarily needing to understand. And that's surrender. That's trust. And, and we're in a a world in an age where we need to understand everything. We need to rationalise everything. But prayer is ultimately something that comes about to surrender. And surrender is the biggest answer to prayer. It's the biggest healing of the heart to be able to walk through life, not having all the answers, not having everything you want to have.
Just knowing that even in the absence and the desire, even in in the frustrations, there's a God who walks with us, who's with us, who has everything under control and that is the greatest answer to prayer.
That reminds me of something that happened just a few weeks ago. This is a difference between my sister and I, my sister is an incredible woman. She's very Holy, she's beautiful. She's also the oldest in the family, so she's bossy- like she has flaws, but you're going to be listening to this think gives me feedback like 10 minutes after it gets uploaded I'm like 'thanks Berni'. She's wonderful. I love her. She's my best friend.
And a few weeks ago we both had to have the this test and our results came back differently and I was upset. I was angry because it wasn't the result that I wanted necessarily. And afterwards we went to mass in Melbourne at the cathedral, which was beautiful. And as we were walking to the car or to lunch, wherever we're going, second, she just turns to me. She's like, you know, that was just a beautiful Mass of Thanksgiving for me. And I was, my first response was anger.
I was like, what do you mean you prayed Thanksgiving? Like I'm angry, I'm upset by these results. And she's like, no, it's exactly what needed to happen and we just have to trust that these results are fine. And I was like , I don't trust that.
So then I'm like, because of her example, I 've really made that intention in my prayer since we got those results, like to change my heart to a prayer of Thanksgiving, which is what y ou're saying like prayer changes us and I think that the example of those around us h elped so much because if I hadn't had my sister there and she hadn't vocalised that prayer of Thanksgiving, I would probably still b e praying that somehow a miracle can happen to change, but instead I've been changed and my
heart's been changed.
And having a physical answer to a prayer and an answer to a physical prayer is great. It's fantastic and it does happen. Miracles do happen. I've seen miracles happen. I will continue to see miracles happen. But the greatest miracle, the greatest answer to prayer is a softening of a heart to the will of God. It's rather than bringing heaven down to earth, it's us being raised up to a heavenly place. So as a consequence, we can bring heaven down to earth.
And so this is the persistence of prayer , but God does want to answer our prayer . You see, God wants to answer our prayer more than we want answer to our prayer, but not necessarily in the way that we want. So when we pray we need to be persistent.
When we ask God, we need to knock until there is so much like persistence and frustration , so to speak, like the person knocking at the door, you know, asking for bread because of guests has arrived and there's a the person again at the back of the house and they're knocking, knocking, and the parable, this other parable says that the person will open because of their persistence. And again, in this parable, God is telling us to be persistent in prayer. Praying once is not enough.
We need to pray without ceasing, without stopping and, and constantly pray for others. Pray for our intentions, the intentions of others, but again, ultimately surrendering to the will of God. Amen.
This attitude of persistence into your prayer life and never stop asking, never stop knocking, and just praying with faith even if you can't see the results. So thank you so much for listening today to the Catholic Influencers podcast. We love having you on this journey with us. Please subscribe so that every week. You can be like my sister who listens to it as soon as it goes up.
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