His Excellency,
The Most Reverend Edward K. Braxton, Ph.D., S.T.D.
Diocese of Belleville
Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 19, 2025, 2025, 9:00 AM Mass
St. Luke Parish, Belleville
“Is God An Unjust Judge?”
(This is the text as originally written. During the actual delivery, some passages were omitted and other comments were added spontaneously. Nota bene: This text has not been thoroughly proofread. Therefore, there may be errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
Chief Justice John Roberts, only the third Catholic Chief Justice in history, and the eight Associate Justices of the Supreme Court did not attend the annual Red Mass in Washington DC on October 5th that marks the beginning of the judicial year, as is their custom, because of concern for the judges’ safety. The approval rating of the Supreme Court is, according to gallop polls, at an all-time low with 39% of Americans approving the court’s work and 56% of Americans disapproving the court’s work. This may be because of the sensitive and debated cases the court chooses to hear; the opposing views of the American people about the court’s rulings; the impact that these rulings have on the daily lives of citizens; the perception of some that the Court is not objective but political with a conservative wing and a liberal wing; and the beliefs of a few that there may be unjust judges on the court. May God continue to grant our Supreme Court the gifts of wisdom and judicial integrity.
Now turn your calendars back 2000 years...
This morning, Jesus of Nazareth makes critical comments about a judge in Luke 18, 1-8, suggesting that, then as now, being a good judge was not easy. In one of His most difficult and most debated parables, Jesus talks about a judge who did not fear God and did not respect the people around him. A woman whose husband had died came to him repeatedly asking him to give her a just decision against an adversary. For a long time, the judge was unwilling to hear her case. “I don’t know this woman and I don’t care about her case. I am indifferent to God, and to this woman’s legal problems.” He was not interested in taking the time to listen to the evidence in her case and determining right from wrong, what was just or unjust. He was a judge without a moral compass.
According to Mosaic law, judges were required to give special attention to widows, since they were left at the mercy of their eldest son to provide for them, if they had one. They were second class citizens.
The woman tells the judge: “Your Honor, please hear my case and vindicate me against my adversary.” The judge rejects her plea: “Go away, You are bothering me.” Perhaps he thought as a widow she could not pay him. But she came back again and again. “I’m begging you. I have no one else who can help me. Isn’t this what God expects you to do?” The judge says “I don’t believe in God. Go away. I have no time to hear your case.” But she kept coming back! Finally, the judge relents. “ Alright, I will give her a just decision. Otherwise, she might attack me.” It is important to understand that the judge does not hear her case out of fear of permitting an unjust outcome, nor out of fear of being regarded as not caring about the poor widow. He simply says, “I will hear her case because it is the only way to get rid of her. She is a dangerous person.”
Significantly, we never find out what the widow’s case is about, if she won her case, or if her cause was just. Then Jesus says, "Pay attention to the words of this dishonest judge. “If this corrupt judge will administer justice because he’s tired of people pestering him, how much more will the Judge of heaven and earth vindicate His people who call upon him for help.”
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Some commentators say the point of this parable is if this judge who is unjust finally listens to the widow’s request, how much more will a loving God answer our prayers.
Other commentators suggest that the judge in this parable represents God Himself, since Luke introduces the parable speaking of the importance of perseverance in praying to God when we are in need. These Commentators argue that just as the uncaring judge finally took the widow’s case after she had worn him out by her pleading, so too with God. Never give up on prayer. Just keep on praying and God will eventually decide to hear and answer your prayers. However, the idea that the indifferent judge represents God is not scripturally or theologically sound. Should we, as followers of Jesus, believe that God, who is Love, hears our prayers not because He loves us and cares for us as His precious creation, but because we have somehow exhausted God, worn Him out by our pleading?
Thinking that this unfeeling, morally indifferent judge represents God can lead to spiritual disaster. It creates what is ultimately a negative image of God as a mother who does not love her baby and only feeds her child when she is sick and tired of hearing the infant’s cries. Thinking of God as the judge incorrectly implies that we can somehow force God to hear and answer your prayers if we pray hard enough and long enough. But we all know form personal experiences that this is NOT true.
Surely, the Palestinians in Gazza and the Jewish people is Israel are praying with all of their hearts that the recently signed imperfect 20-point Peace Plan supported by the United States will not only lead to a stable cease fire but also lead to a just and lasting peace. But only time will tell.
Already shots are being fired!
Surely, the people of Ukraine and the ordinary citizens of Russia are praying with all of their hearts that the upcoming meeting between the President of the United States and the President of Russia in Budapest will lead to progress in ending Russia’s cruel, unjust war on Ukraine. But only time will tell.
The President of Ukraine left the White House Friday empty handed!
Surely, American citizens are praying with all of their hearts that the civil discord and strife that are moving through our country with increasing intensity will not lead to the worst possible confrontation. But only time will tell.
Read this morning’s news!
We have all prayed day and night unceasingly and unselfishly for God’s assistance in a matter of utmost importance and yet our prayers were NOT answered. I still see my Mother Dear, her eyes red with tears, praying day and night at my precious brother, Lawrence’s bedside as he lay dying of liver cancer. Praying not for herself but for Lawrence’s wife and daughter who needed him so. Nevertheless, my only brother died in my mother’s arms. Mother Dear was not consoled to hear, “Evelyn, your prayers WERE answered. The answer simply was not the answer for which you prayed so desperately.”
(One of the great stumbling blocks of faith may by what many consider to be the unanswerable question: why does God allow innocent human suffering?)
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Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
Many saints have reminded us that the prayer of petition is lowest form of prayer coming after prayers of Contrition, Thanksgiving, Adoration and Contemplation. The saints certainly did not think the unjust judge in this morning’s parable represented God.
The saints would certainly encourage us to make our prayers of petitions known to God with confidence and hope. they see great meaning in the prayers of those who gathered before this Eucharist to pray the Rosary, those who pray with special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, wives and husbands who pray for God’s blessing on their day at breakfast every morning, those who pray with sincere hearts for the end to war, violence, hunger and sickness, and those who pray for their neighbors who have been brought to the door of death by grave illness.
But the saints surely know that God does not ordinarily break into time, space, human history, and our personal lives to alter events in the world at our request no matter how sincere and prolonged our prayers may be. God may comfort us in our prayer, but events in our lives and in the world may unfold in a manner that may seem to be the opposite of that for which we prayed. This is why the Catholic Church speaks of miracles as rarissima, the rarest of events. And this is why I have told you that thinking the unjust judge in this morning’s parable can lead to spiritual disaster. Nevertheless, God has put within our reach the resources needed to bring about the answer many, but not all, of our prayers. There is a degree of truth in the expression, here on earth God’s work must truly be our own, since God is not God the way we would be God if we were God. Today’s gospel is a good reminder not to focus all of our prayers on petition, especially not to pray. “O God if you answer my prayer the way I want you to, I will do this for you in return!” We cannot bargain with God. We must not neglect the higher forms of prayer: Contrition, Thanksgiving, Adoration and, most of all Contemplation.
In the 14th century, an anonymous mystic wrote in The Cloude of Unknowing that one of the most important ways to pray is contemplation. He tells us to put aside concerns about how God is God, how God sustains the universe, why God does or does not answer our prayers and surrender our questions, our doubts, our anxieties, our egos, our minds, our hearts, and even our words in prayer to the silent realm of "unknowing." (St. Francis of Assisi, “Prayerfully share the Gospel at all times by your deeds, use words only if it is necessary.”)
The prayer of contemplation (perhaps simply meditation on “God is Love”) may lead you to a deeper awareness that we breath, we move and we live within the divine mystery in the presence of the God who is God: THE ONE WHO DWEELS IN UNAPPROCHABLE LIGHT!
Praised be Jesus Christ. Both now and forever. AMEN!