If you struggled in school when you were a youngster and were unfortunate enough to have an unsympathetic classroom teacher, you might have been told something like, “If that’s the best you can do, I’d hate to see your worst effort.” 

That kind of sarcastic remark intends to be funny because it sets up a supposedly humorous comparison between two opposites.  In a similar way, the parable in today’s Gospel reading sets up a comparison between someone who is really good and someone who is really bad.  The purpose of the comparison isn’t to encourage really bad behavior but to highlight what makes a person really good. 

The parable was Jesus’ response to a question about when the kingdom of God would come.  Jesus said that one must trust that God will fulfill the promise of redemption fully and at the appropriate time. 

In the parable, a widow repeatedly pleads her case before a corrupt judge.  In ancient Hebrew culture, widows were excluded from inheriting the property of their deceased husbands.  Consequently, a widow without an adult son faced destitution.  For this reason, widowhood was used as a metaphor for being oppressed, mistreated, or deprived. 

The parable tells us that the judge was corrupt; we are to assume that the widow was righteous, but the source of her righteousness is seen only at the end of the parable.  As she lacked the legal grounds to obtain a just decision, she had to resort to embarrassing the judge publicly on a repeated basis. (Lk 18:3-5) 

The parable’s comparison between really good and really bad is based on the beliefs of the two central characters.  The parable does not condone the corrupt behavior of the judge nor the manipulative behavior of the widow.  Rather, the parable is instruction to persevere in prayer in the way that the widow persevered in her belief in God’s justice. 

Sadly, the parable is often misunderstood to suggest that God can be coerced by repeated prayers of petition.  It should be obvious that this is a misunderstanding as it projects onto God the corruptness of the judge; unfortunately, not all see this as a misunderstanding. 

Because of the essential relationship between belief and prayer, effective prayer teaches one to know God and, by knowing God’s nature, to grow in one’s attachment to God’s will.  Prayer, then, is not for the purpose of changing God’s mind but for the purpose of being changed by one’s knowledge of God.   

Quite obviously, persistent prayer doesn’t always lead to greater knowledge of God; the parable illustrates why this happens.  There are two opposing images of God that one can infer from the parable.  The first is the image of a god who can’t be trusted to respond to prayer immediately and fully; this image is descriptive of human beings but not descriptive of the One, True God.  The second image of God that one might infer from this parable is the God who is always present to God’s People and who desires God’s People always to be present to God. 

In order to reject the false image of God, and perceive the true image of God, one must seek to fulfill one’s desire for God rather to fulfill one’s desires for created goods.  The widow in the parable was truly good because she trusted in God’s righteousness. The judge was truly bad because he trusted his in reputation, a created thing.  (The widow in the parable represents the faithful disciple who waits patiently for the coming of the kingdom, while the corrupt judge represents the Pharisees who corrupted religion into an exercise in self-righteousness.) 

Jesus summed up the parable with a rhetorical question.  He asked his disciples, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk 18:8)  If he was in a sarcastic mood, he might have said, “If whiny, nagging, worried prayer is the best you can do, I don’t want to see you at your worst.” 

In answer to the question about when the kingdom of God will come in its fullness, Jesus instructed his disciples to persevere in trusting prayer.  There is nothing wrong with repetitive petitionary prayer, as long as it is an act of trust.  On the other hand, there is nothing right about petitionary prayer if it is an expression of distrust in God’s unfailingly goodness toward God’s People. (Lk 18:7-8)

The instruction to trust patiently in God’s will is also instruction about how to pray effectively.  There are many forms of prayer in Catholicism, but not all forms of prayer are of equal value.  Growth in trust, and growth in prayer, occur in one’s life in the same way they occurred for the widow.  The widow’s righteousness was the result of her trust that God always does justice for God’s People; this belief is expressed repeatedly in the Scriptures.   Prayer centered on the Scriptures teaches proper beliefs as well as proper prayer.  Daily prayer with the Scriptures is not only really good prayer, it makes one a really good person by revealing the nature of God’s divine personhood.