Persistence & Perseverance as Essential Qualities of Prayer

by Anthony Maranise, Obl.S.B.

Those who know me well would likely unhesitatingly tell you that I am a ‘rather sentimental’ person. I don’t deny this, and, in fact, I quite enjoy being that way. Sentimentality is, as I see it, a gift because you derive and seek to find or ascribe deep meaning to people, places, circumstances, and sometimes, even things. I could easily turn this reflective piece into a ‘theological treatise’ and go on about how there is something to be said about the similarities between sentimentality and sacramentality, but at least for this work, I will spare the reading audience.

Being the sentimental person I am, I tend to hang on to (or keep) the things that truly mean something special to me. Recently, as I was digging through an old prayer book of mine, in search for a saintly attribution for a genuine theological work I am working on for publication, I stumbled across an old letter addressed to me. The postmark date read 11 February 2005. Apart from realizing that I must have kept a letter for some twenty years for a reason (and that I was seventeen years old when I received this letter), I also noted that 11 February is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, one of Our Good Lord’s highest honorees in all of Heaven – the Queen of Saints, of Heaven, and of Earth all in one – His own Mother, Mary Immaculate.

I will dispense with the backstory behind the personal and handwritten letter to me, but I will say that it was from a dear priest-friend of mine and my family’s. This man, who, marked with the sign of faith, has gone before us to help prepare our place with the Lord, was the great Monsignor Peter Buchignani of the Catholic Diocese of Memphis in Tennessee. In this old letter, as I unearthed it from its envelope, I noticed right away why I kept it. It was a word of spiritual encouragement to me when I was facing a difficult time and there was a single line that read, “I must commend you for your persistence, Anthony, as persistence is an essential quality of prayer”.

As a lay Benedictine (known as an ‘oblate’, for the unfamiliar), I can say that I have certainly come to understand how vital both persistence and perseverance are in one’s successful prayer life as well as if one wishes to progress with any positive growth in their spiritual life. As Benedictines, even those of us third-order members, we are encouraged to pray frequently (morning, afternoon, and night, formally) and then spontaneously to ourselves throughout the day through our work and/or other devotional offerings.

All that said, today – the Feast of Saint John Vianney, the Patron Saint of Priests – I was struck in quite a surprising way by the Gospel I have heard proclaimed so many times. The Gospel was from St. Matthew, chapter 14, verses 13-21. I give you this citation so you may read God’s Good Word yourself if you like.

The Gospel opens on a sad note with Jesus having learned of the death of his cousin, dear friend, and baptizer, St. John the Baptist. The Word tells us that upon learning of this, “Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place”, no doubt to mourn so great a loss to Him.

Yet, the Gospel continues…

Even whilst Jesus is in the midst of His own sorrow, mourning, and grief, people in need flocked to Him and settled on the shores, eagerly and anxiously awaiting Jesus’ disembarking from the boat.

Moved with pity for the great crowd that had gathered, even in the midst of His own grief, Jesus healed and counseled them – going even so far as to feed them.

St. Matthew’s Gospel is distinct from the other three (Mark, Luke, and John) in its narration of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand because St. Matthew makes a very clear point in saying: “Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children” (14:21). This does more than suggest something to us – it is deliberate. In this instance, Jesus fed well over five thousand persons with his miraculous multiplication of two fish and five loaves of bread.

There is still more to be learned from this beautiful Gospel, namely, that it was the faithful’s persistence and perseverance in seeking Jesus, even to the edges of the sea, and even while He was grieving that, quite literally, ‘moved the heart of God Himself’.

Though we may get frustrated when it takes the Lord a little while (as only we human beings perceive it) to come to positively hear and positively answer our deepest prayers (be they of thanksgiving, petition, praise, or intercession), we needn’t stop seeking God in prayer and through other practices that inform, strengthen, and sustain our spiritual lives.

It may be easy for us to either overlook or simply forget, but the persistent and perseverant in prayer have (and I contend, still do) move God’s heart to compassion. We see this throughout the Sacred Scriptures, in a number of places, both in the Old and New Testaments.

I get rather annoyed when persons insist that God’s Will is “set” and/or “not subject to change.” A very cursory review of the Sacred Scriptures presents a counter to that often spiritually destructive idea.

God, who is an entirely free-willed Being (and perfect in His power, wisdom, and love), would actually cease to be God and rather be no more than a monster were He so stone-hearted that those for whom He gave up His own life – we, His children – not able to move His heart (and thus, in some cases, even His Will) to compassion.

We can look to Job, Moses and the ever-complaining Israelites in the Desert, the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the recounting of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of Isaac, the words concerning restoration from the Prophet Joel, among other instances, wherein God has demonstrated and shown that His Holy Mind and His Holy Will can turn – via persistence and perseverance exhibited by those He has come to call His own beloved children– from ‘set in stone’ to ‘making a way where these was not one before’.

God does not turn a blind eye, a deaf ear, nor a stone heart to those who entreat Him most ardently.

Even insofar as Jesus, from this Gospel, wanted and needed time to grieve St. John the Baptist, we see that – even for Jesus, very God of very God – life still had to move forward, and even in the midst of His (or even our own) grief, sorrow, and/or difficulties. There remains work to be done for the Lord and for each of us.

How great the need for we, the faithful, to learn and to know the importance of persistence and perseverance in prayer and in the spiritual life!

So, let’s focus again on the people in the Gospel, because it is the people’s faith (made manifest through persistence and perseverance – never giving up on Jesus) that causes Jesus to ‘pivot’, as it were, from His original plans and intentions to grieve His loved-one in peace.

The people came to and sought out the Lord! They came to Him, as we often do: broken, lost, searching, sick, and even hungry. It was, in fact, their persistence, their perseverance that Jesus saw as a profound expression of their deep faith; and this deep faith moved the heart of the Lord.

Thus, we, in our own lives, should imitate not only the people from this Gospel in remaining ever-persistent and ever-perseverant in our prayer lives (communication with God) and spiritual pursuits (our quest for union with the Lord), but, quite naturally, we, who bear the name – and unashamedly so – of Christian, ought to follow Jesus’ reaction to these very people that we sometimes are also.

Even in the midst of our own struggles, we must recognize that others need our help, the hope we can give them in Jesus, our own time and presence, our encouragement in prayer, and ultimately, that, like Jesus, we must allow ourselves to be moved to compassion by the persistence and perseverance of others. What we may, at times, in others, see as “annoying,” God sees as anything but. He sees a robust, active, dedicated, and determined faith!

I would be remiss were I not to conclude this reflection article with two vital points:

(1) Jesus Himself encourages and lauds persistence and perseverance in prayer, spiritual matters, and even, at times, by way of the Parable, even temporal ones.

In St. Luke’s Gospel (11:5-9), Jesus presents one of His famous Parables, and this time it concerns prayer. While I recommend reading the Gospel as here cited in whole for context, Jesus makes clear that God (at once His very self as well as His Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit) will give unto the faithful petitioner “whatever he needs because of his persistence”.

(2) St. Alphonsus Ligouri, mincing no words, of course, reminds us bluntly, but effectively that, “All those in hell are there because they stopped praying; they would not be there had they not stopped praying!”

Thus, St. Paul encourages us onward, and exhorts us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) because it is ultimately through our persistence and perseverance in prayer that we not only please God, but can even move His Heart and His Will to compassion for us, who are so undeserving of His infinite Love, yet so dearly prized by Him who, by His own nature, cannot and will not cease to overflow with love for those He has come to claim as His own.

There is a small picture that hangs in my home office just to the right of my writing desk nearest the window. It, more or less, encapsulates the heart of this article today. It reads simply this: “Ask God Again! Ask again. No matter how big or small. Ask again. No matter how easy or hard. Ask again. No matter how much it hurts. Keep trusting God and have patience in His timing. One day, you will meet a miracle with your name written all over it!”

Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints!