Most parents hate it when their kids pester them for something. Not God Our Father. He expects it. In fact, he’s perpetually attentive to perpetual prayer. That’s why many churches devote a chapel to that purpose. This Sunday’s readings support the wisdom of that decision.
In our first reading (Ex 17:8-13), Moses advises Joshua to confront his enemy Amalek with a battle powered by perpetual prayer.
As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight. Moses’ hands, however, grew tired; so they put a rock in place for him to sit on. Meanwhile Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset.
The important point here is that prayer became a team effort. Aaron and Hur kept Moses strong, and the same applies to today’s version of perpetual adoration, where fellow parishioners work together to keep humanity’s line of communication with The Divine wide open. With someone spending every hour of every day in front of the Blessed Sacrament in an adoration chapel, we fill our Lord’s perpetual capacity to answer us. How do we know He wants our constant droning? We hear it directly from Jesus and through Timothy the Evangelist in this Sunday’s other two readings.
First, Timothy tells us to never rest in our adoration, especially if there are human ears to hear it (2 Tm 3:14-4:2). Adoration takes the form of proclaiming truth to each other.
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingly power: proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching.
Then we hear Luke’s account of Jesus’s parable dramatizing our need to pray always without becoming weary (Lk 18:1-8). He uses as an example a judge who uses his power to approve the ceaseless petitions of a poor widow seeking his assistance.
“Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
If there’s a persistently-used perpetual adoration chapel left standing by that time, He will.
–Tom Andel