At a local parish there was a big supply cabinet which, because it had so much stuff in it, was locked with a combination lock. One Sunday morning one of the teachers needed something out of the cabinet, but she couldn’t remember the combination, so the pastor came by to help. He confidently turned the dial to the first two numbers, but then stopped and seemed uncertain as to how to proceed.

Finally he looked up, and seemed to be staring intently towards heaven and then he seemed to realize what the third number was and confidently turned the dial and opened the lock. One of the teachers who was there watching said: “What a great display of the power of prayer. Obviously you couldn’t remember the third number, you looked up to heaven for guidance, and the Lord revealed it to you. How marvelous!”

“Thanks,” said the priest. “Prayer is certainly powerful, but in this case there was something else. The number of the combination is written on a piece of paper taped to the ceiling.”

Jesus today tells a parable which Luke explains is designed to remind us of the necessity of praying always without becoming weary. We see the same message in the first reading, from the Book of Exodus, where Moses is holding his hands up in prayer over the Jewish army and, when he does so, the battle goes well for the Jews, and when he grows weary and stops holding his hands up, the battle goes badly.

So, to solve the problem of Moses’ weariness, Aaron and Hur give Moses a rock on which to sit, and hold Moses’ hands up throughout the battle, enabling the Jews to prevail.

And, of course, this isn’t the only time that Jesus tells us about the importance of persistence in prayer. Earlier in Luke’s gospel, for example, in chapter 11, Jesus gives the example of the person who has unexpected guests during the night and has nothing to give them. He asks his neighbor for something to feed the guests and the neighbor’s reaction is to say that he won’t get up—he’s already in bed—but, Jesus says, the neighbor will  up because of the persistence of the one asking for help.
God will respond in the same way, Jesus tells us.

Jesus teaches us to pray with the “Our Father.” He often goes off alone to pray. There is no doubt that, for Jesus, prayer is central to His existence. Following that example, the Church admonishes us to pray constantly as well.

Do we do that? Do we pray constantly—or at least often? By our example do we lead others to pray?

With that series of questions in mind let me tell you of something that one of the guys who is a deacon candidate, to be ordained this December (God willing) did as a project as part of his diaconate formation. The guy has a son who is a Minneapolis cop, and so he’s particularly attuned to the difficulties of being in law enforcement these days. As he talked to his son, and reflected on what members of the police force experience, he realized that police officers have a lot of preparation on a practical, physical level for what they see, but very little spiritual preparation. 

He gave the example of a situation where his son came to the scene of a shooting, and there was a young man who was clearly about to die. Confronted with that reality, all his son could say was: “Take a couple of deep breaths—it will be over soon.”

We can do better, he thought. So he connected with the head of the police chaplains in Minneapolis, ran all the trap lines through the Minneapolis police bureaucracy, and finally—after most of a year-- got approval to do two things: he got a prayer card printed with the prayer of St. Michael, the patron saint of law enforcement people, on it and the Minneapolis police shield, and got permission to hand it out to the cops; and, he got the names of all the members of the police force in Minneapolis and got each name printed on a prayer card to give out to people who would pray for each of them.

Here’s what the prayer says:
He went to all 6 police precincts and attended all the shift change meetings, handling out the prayer of St. Michael and explaining the prayer cards with the individual names. The cops loved it. Then he went to Minneapolis churches—Incarnation, Annunciation, other Catholic churches, Lutheran churches like Mt. Olivet, and gave out the prayer cards to people who wanted to pray for a cop. So far about 700 of the 800 members of the Minneapolis police force each have a person praying for them.  I’m praying for an officer named Dean Kreg.

Does it matter? Jesus tells us it does. And, if you look at the way the Minneapolis police handled the highly-contentious visit of President Trump, where there were people on both sides who were pretty emotional and where things could easily have gone very wrong, you’d have to agree. The police did their job brilliantly—intervening to stop violence before it started, keeping the peace, allowing free speech, using a minimum of force—making just one arrest.

These days we can be pretty tough on the Church, and there are reasons for that. But let’s not forget that we continue to do great things, especially when we listen to Jesus and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  

Pray always, without growing weary, and you might be surprised at the results.