Four weeks ago the Gospel told us about a dishonest steward. Today the Gospel tells us about a dishonest judge.

It’s not that Jesus has suddenly taken a liking to crooks. Dishonesty is dishonesty, and Jesus does not applaud that.

But evildoers often exhibit a character trait less frequently found in good people: persistence. They’re resolute, single-minded. They have a goal and they’ll reach it, “by hook or crook.”

The Gospel today does not tell us much about how this particular judge is dishonest. We know he “neither feared God nor respected any human being,” which suggests he did whatever he found personally profitable or advantageous.

Along comes a “widow” who wants a “just decision.” Who would have thought?

The judge, the Gospel tells us, is “unwilling” to grant her request. She’s a widow, which means (1) she probably is as poor as a synagogue mouse (church mice being a thing of the future); and (2) probably has nobody to protect her. On top of that, maybe her “adversary” is wealthy or in a conspiracy with the judge.

On first glance, the “adversary” seems to have the potential to offer the unjust judge a lot more than the widow. So he puts her off.

And she persisted.

She keeps coming back. She keeps pressing her case. She “bothers him.”

That makes the judge think. How do I get rid of this pest? At best, she disturbs his peace. At worst, she might in her frustration “come and strike me.”

So, he decides justly in her favor. Not because it’s the right thing to do — he doesn’t care about that — but it’s the only way to get rid of her.

Now God is not an unjust judge, which is the point of the parable. If, because of persistence, even a corrupt judge does the right thing (albeit for the wrong reason), then how much more should those who persist in prayer expect justice from God?

As noted above, persistence is sometimes more experienced among the bad than the good. Jesus is not approving that, but asking why that same resoluteness is often absent from our pursuit of the good and the holy.

The Gospel seems to be talking about petitionary prayer, what the “chosen ones” who “call out to him day and night” are asking for.

Petition requires persistence, not because God needs to be worn down or reminded — he knows what we need before we ask (Matthew 6:8) — but because sometimes the issue is whether we really want or need what we seek.

I confess I am a book addict. I need to expand the house to fit what’s crammed on the shelves. As I write, I’m looking at a book I ordered two years ago, before COVID-19, which still have not been read. How often do we ask for something we really don’t need or even want? Persistence helps ferret out the ephemeral from the necessary.

But even in other kinds of prayer — like adoration or thanksgiving — persistence is vital because “practice makes perfect.” The son of a friend of mine has been practicing piano since he was in grade school. He’s now on a music scholarship at Notre Dame.

Do you pray the same way you did as a child? In some ways, maybe yes: lifetime lessons are learned at a mother’s knee. But in some ways, no: “When I was a child, I talked like a child … when I became a man, I put childhood things behind me” (1 Corinthians 13:11).

That growth only comes from persistence in prayer and, let’s be honest, how many of us are particularly good at persistence in prayer? How often do our resolutions to “pray more” or “pray better” have a shorter shelf-life than a New Year’s resolution?

So Our Lord today counsels us on the importance of persistence in prayer. That means doing it regularly, whether we “feel” like it or not. It means not just “wishin’ and hopin’” to do it, but making concrete plans to do it, like setting aside this time or that place to pray. It doesn’t happen automatically.

Imagine the persistent widow. Her pursuit of the judge was not hit-or-miss. She knew when and where the court sat. She observed his movements. She probably knew where he lived. And she made it a point to be in his face.

That took resolution coupled with concrete plans.

British artist Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) illustrated today’s parable in an 1864 woodcut for a series of 20 on the parables. Millais says it took him seven years to create that series of illustrations, because he reworked each one multiple times to get it just right. The work is held by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The scene is crowded. The unjust judge reclines on a cushioned chair, haughtily turning his face from the widow, his hand raised dismissively. She kneels at his right, her hands folded in prayerful begging (there are times in court documents when lawyers write that the petitioner “prays” for relief). Her face is earnest, her appearance sincere, and she looks him in the eye.

All sorts of other people are gathered around the judge. At his left sits a scribe, their version of a court recorder, documenting the proceeding. Three men look on, curious, perhaps with interest in the outcome: maybe one is the “adversary” against whom the widow seeks redress. The man most immediately to the judge’s right seems to be sneering at the widow: maybe he’s her problem. Some curious fellow is craning over the back of the judge’s chair to see what all the hubbub is about. A helmeted official, perhaps a soldier, is attempting to grab the widow: this “bailiff” needs to remove her from the court, her petition having been denied. Good luck with that. In the words of the Terminator, “I’ll be back.”

Millais’s work is small, only about five inches by five inches, which makes the level of its detail incredible — just look at the hairs of the Judge’s beard. Millais started his artistic career as a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England, a movement that sought to recover the color, style, and complexity of 14th century Italian art. That meant that religious themes often dominated their work, two of which we have already examined in this series. (See here and here.)

By 1864, however, Millais was moving beyond Pre-Raphaelitism, which some claim was his “selling out” while others suggest that, with a growing family and the need to earn a living, he became more mainstream. It has also been argued that he expanded his artistic repertoire to include the influence of later artists, especially Spain’s Velázquez and Holland’s Rembrandt. Clearly, however, the religious influences of Pre-Raphaelitism remained, even if this was a commissioned commercial work.

Jesus exhorts us: “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

Who’s that knocking at the door?