A dishonest judge & a persistent widow!
Today’s Gospel teaches us about the importance of prayer and how much we should pray to God; it’s the Parable of the Persistent Widow. You can read it in Luke 18:1-8.
“[Jesus] told [his disciples] a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. He said, 2 “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. 3And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’ 4For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘while it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, 5 because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.’
6The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says, 7 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? 8 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?”
While this story has been known for centuries as the Parable of the Persistent Widow, it could very well be re-titled or renamed as the “Parable of the Dishonest Judge” because actually there are two principal characters in this parable whom the Lord gave equal billing or importance. Clearly the Lord wants us to know each one of these characters. Parables like this gives us a peek into the past of what people did during ancient times.
Our first character is about the dishonest judge, which gives us the idea that dishonest judges are as old as the world’s oldest profession which is prostitution. In truth, they are not much different from prostitutes, who sell their bodies for money, while dishonest judges sell their decisions often to the highest bidder to the grave injustice of the other!
Surely this parable must have been told and retold so many times in countless churches that by now, any judge who knows within his or her heart that she did not give any just decision to the accused or the plaintiff knows only too well that he is answerable to God and the injustice he causes will be paid with eternal damnation. Woe therefore to any dishonest judge by whose evil actions dooms him or herself to the gates of hell!
Hopefully today’s parable will touch the lives of many a dishonest judge who in reality are only Catholics in name. But they are like the Pharisees as our Lord Jesus Christ once pointed out: “Clean like white tombs on the outside, but decaying inside” because of the grave injustice that they have committed before those who come to them, asking only justice.
A couple of years ago when he was still the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Hilario Davide, Jr. we talked about the injustice done by so many so-called “rogues in robes” and Justice Davide remarked: “What you are referring to is not simply injustice, but a grave injustice! Judges who commit them should be removed from the bench and the practice of law for they only defile the legal profession.”
Let me add my ten centavos’ worth to this verbal exchange with the former chief justice, the greatest problem our nation faces today is a serious lack of justice. That old legal dictum “Justice delayed is Justice denied” seems to be the rule of this land ever since the dark days of Martial Law. If only we had justice, that means speedy justice, I strongly believe that many of what ails our government, like graft and corruption will be eradicated. A case in point is the Office of the Ombudsman who was given all the necessary evidences to file charges against a corrupt politician, yet they still don’t do something to stop the corrupt and the damned!
The other character in this parable is the persistent widow. Actually the key word here is persistence, which anyone can do. When one is persistent enough, they often get what they want —even justice from a dishonest judge, who neither feared man or God! But while this parable refers to the persistency of the widow demanding justice from a dishonest judge, you can just imagine what we who are considered “Sons of God” by Divine Filiation can achieve when we bombard heaven with our prayers to God?
No doubt, the power of prayer is the greatest weapon we can use on this earth and there are so many examples we can find in the Bible from
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For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mozcom. Bobit Avila’s columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.
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