HOMILY FOR SATURDAY OF THE 32ND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A

HOMILY FOR SATURDAY OF THE 32ND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A

SAINT OF THE DAY: Memorial of the Dedication of the Basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul.

THEME: The parable of the unjust judge.

BY: Fr Deotacious Chikontwe SMA

READINGS OF THE DAY
Wisdom 18:14-16,19:6-9
Psalm 104:2-3,36-37,42-43
Luke 18:1-8

LITURGICAL COLOUR
WHITE

INTRODUCTION
Good morning dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate Saturday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year A.
Dear friends in Christ, as believers in today’s world, it can be tempting to lose heart at times. We can sense that faith in God and in his Son Jesus, being part of the faith community we call church, is not greatly valued by today’s commentators. We can also lose heart as believers for more personal reasons. We encounter some great suffering and we wonder where God is in it all. We feel some injustice has been done to us and we conclude that God has not stood by us.

ABOUT THE GOSPEL READING OF TODAY
According to today’s gospel reading, Jesus spoke the parable of the judge and the widow to encourage his disciples not to lose heart but to keep on praying, to pray continuously, even in times of great darkness. By means of this parable Jesus is encouraging us to have a persistent faith. The widow is an example of such persistent faith. When an injustice was done to her, she did not lose heart. She kept hammering away at the judge who alone could grant her justice until he caved in to her demands, fearful perhaps that she would resort to violence if he didn’t respond to her.

CONCLUSION
Jesus is encouraging us to have something of the gutsy determination of the widow. Our persistent prayer is not to an unjust judge who couldn’t care less about God or his fellow human beings. We pray to a God who is passionately concerned about us. All the more reason why we should have a persistent faith that finds expression in continual prayer. Having spoken the parable, Jesus asks the question, ‘When the Son of Man comes will he find any faith on earth?’ When he comes at the end of time, will he find people of the kind of persistent faith displayed by the widow, or will his disciples have lost heart by then, worn down by the trials of life. It is a question that puts it up to us, in the words of the letter to the Hebrew, ‘to run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith’.

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