PERSISTENCE

INTRODUCTION

The title and theme of my homily  for this 29^th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C - is, “Persistence!”

TODAY’S READINGS

It jumped right off the page in today’s second reading from Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy: “Be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient!”

It’s the obvious theme of today’s gospel from Luke as well as today’s first reading from Exodus.

In the first reading - we have this ancient story about  Moses on a hill while Israel’s soldiers are fighting down in the fields and plains below. As long as Moses’ arms are raised Israel is winning the battle - when his arms start to fall they start to lose. Needless to say, notice the verb “mowed down” - as in “And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.”

Wouldn’t we rather like it to be a game - a sport - instead of a battle where people are being killed? Haven’t we seen that beer commercial - when drinking buddies are rubbing heads - shaking bobble head figures - doing this or that - trying to effect their teams chances of winning from a distance? I was watching the Red Sox fans last night. They would all stand up and scream and cheer at key moments to encourage their team. Evidently it worked. I wish my Dodgers could have done that - as well as the football Giants - so right now I’m in the basketball season.

And today’s gospel has this gem of a story about the nagging widow who is driving a judge crazy with her persistence. He settles a case in her favor - just to shut her up and get her out of his hair.

The title of my homily is “Persistence.”

Persistence …. stick to it tiveness ….. never giving up ness …. staying the course …. The patron saint animal example - well actually it’s an insect - it’s the mosquito - who keeps coming, coming, buzzing, buzzing,  till it gets our blood. Persistence!

The main area for persistence from today’s readings is prayer - obviously - but I want to look at 3 other areas where we see the power of persistence.

FIRST OF ALL: EDUCATION

When I began thinking of persistence, I began thinking about education for starters. Think about how much persistence plays its part when it comes to educating each of us.

How many times does a kid have to see, to write, to be encouraged to say a letter out loud - till she gets it.  So too one’s numbers. So too one’s colors, one’s words.

I went to grammar school way before Sesame Street - which made learning these basics so colorful and game like. In fact most of the years I was in grammar school - we didn’t have television. It was before black and white TV. 

I remember writing in those exercise books with a Dalmatian look alike cover an exercise called, “Over the loop, under the loop, over the loop, under the loop” as a way of learn good penmanship. I liked doing them because they looked like turtles or small hills - sometimes upside down.

I ended up doing the same thing in the seminary with Latin and Greek words - writing them over and over and over and over again - dozens and dozens and dozens of times till I got them.

Persistence is central to education.

I remember a guy in the seminary with us - Ralph Leone. I wonder what ever happened to Ralph Leone. He was very bright and very bored with studies - so he started memorizing the dictionary and he made it to N I think before he left us.

Persistence is central to education.

Thank a teacher today in person or in prayer for your education.

Yesterday I had a funeral for a lady from our parish named Paula Ginnetty. For 15 years she taught Exceptional Children. I was talking to her husband John last week to get some information for a homily for Paula.

She came up with a way blind kids could play baseball. She found a softball that had bells in it - and when thrown it sounded. Step one. She got bats. Next she came up with  bases that made sounds - so when a kid hit the bell sounding ball, he or she knew which way to run. It taxed my imagination trying to picture all this - but her husband said that it worked.

She ran into a boy - whose mother was a drug addict - and went to jail - so they took the kid in as a temporary foster child for 3 or 4 years - and he didn’t kept saying, “I can’t” when it came to reading. Well Paula was persistent and kept saying, “You can. Yes you can!” And sure enough in 6 months he was up to his grade level - and other teachers were amazed at how good a teacher Paula was.

The title of my homily is, “Persistence.”

SECOND AREA: MEDICINE

Think medicine.  In the year 2013 we benefit from the persistence of researchers, doctors, scientists, inventors, medical engineers - teachers - who have advanced medicine to where it is today.

We are standing on the undergirding of a great history of trial and error  - success and failure - diagnosis and prognosis.

Thank a doctor and a nurse this week in person or in prayer.

I had my gall bladder out a few years ago - as an out patient. I had often heard that it meant a week at least in the hospital and big belly scars for life. I have a tiny little reminder scar just above my belly button. If you are persistent I’ll show it to you. Well, I went into the hospital around 7 AM - got bounced because of an emergency - and finally got knocked out around 9:30 AM - and I was walking downtown Annapolis at 3 PM.  Thanks to modern procedures, it was a piece of cake out patient operation.

The title of my homily is, “Persistence.”

THIRD  ARENA: PARENTING

Think of all the persistence needed in parenting.

As in education - which parenting is - think of all the persistence needed in raising a child. Step by step, the kid learns to climb the steps - and walk the walk and talk the talk.

Don’t we smile when we see a mom or a day teaching a kid at the baptismal or holy water font, how to bless oneself? Right hand, left hand, wrong side, right side, the kid eventually gets it.

I remember visiting a family once. I was watching the mom feeding her little baby son in a high chair with a spoon and a heated jar of mushy - ugly looking baby food.  She made it a game - but it was taking forever. The little jar was ¾ empty when her husband came into the room. He had just got home from outside work. She said, “Here I have to start supper for us!” She handed him the spoon and the jar of baby food.  The father didn’t do indirect. Spoons - food - go directly to the mouth. The little guy wanted the game and kept his mouth shut. Well the father got angry with the little guy for not obeying daddy’s command:  “Eat!”

So  the little boy started crying and looking past his daddy to his mummy - till she finally took over again. I’ve often wondered if that was the daddy’s plan in the first place.

Persistence.

I think of my dad. Part of our parent’s love story is my father’s love letters. Both my parents, Mike and Mary, knew each other in Ireland - living within a stone’s throw of each other. Both came to America. My father ended up in New York City. My mom was in Boston.

My mother’s job was to make money to bring her brothers to America. My father’s hope was to marry my mom - so he wrote love letters to her from New York to Boston for 10 years. The last letter said, “If you won’t marry me, I’ll become an Irish Christian Brother.”

Well, obviously, that worked. Persistence paid off. Thank God.

I slowly realized - but honestly more looking back as an adult - that my dad headed out the door for work at Nabisco - over on the West Side of Manhattan - every morning at 6 AM. That meant the subway from our stop - 59^th Street in Brooklyn - to 14^th Street in Manhattan.  Then Nabisco decided to move their cooking making plant to Fair Lawn,  New Jersey. This now meant he had to leave every morning at 4:30 or so - take the subway to 42^nd Street in Manhattan and then take a bus to Fair Lawn. I never found out how far from the bus stop the Nabisco plant was. Then back home every evening.

Work - the work our parents do for us - is ongoing, never ending, persistence.

I think of my dad taking all 4 of us kids to the park every Sunday after Mass all through our childhood to give my mom a break. At times - it was “Ugh!” and a “Oh no not again!” But he did it.

I noticed my brother then did the same thing with his 7 daughters - bringing them to Washington D.C. on Sundays to give my sister-in-law a break. Persistence - in spite of the “Oh no, not again!” comments.

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “Persistence!”

Jesus stressed persistence in prayer.

I would stress it as a theme of prayer for the gift of persistence.

I don’t see prayer as prayer for stuff - but prayer for gifts like persistence and patience - whether one is an educator, a doctor, a nurse, a researcher, a parent or what have you.

I mentioned  earlier on that I learned Latin by writing down words over and over and over again.

We once had a teacher who had us memorize Latin sayings. It helped that some of them were dactylic hexameters like this one - that has the theme of this homily: “Guta cavat lapidem, no vi, sed saepe cadendo.”

Translated freely:  “Drop by drop water hollows a hole in a stone - not by force - but by persistent falling.”