From the hearing of faith to persistent prayer in Galatians 3

Who has fascinated you into not obeying the truth?
Galatians 3:1

The liturgy of this Thursday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time presents us with two texts that, at first glance, seem distant, but both confess the same truth about Christian life. The Spirit we receive is not a conquest of the flesh nor a reward of the Law; it is a gift that we receive through faithful listening and guard through prayer that does not cease. Saint Paul, in Glory “Lucas, in his writing, frees the faithful in Galatia from the illusion of justifying themselves by their own efforts.” Luke 11,5-13 teaches that to the Father, one should pray with the persistence of one who has been loved first. Between the rebuke of the Apostle and the parable of the Lord flows the same sap, the grace that precedes, sustains, and crowns our entire pilgrimage of faith.

The listening of faith against the enchantment of the Law

The Letter to the Galatians is the passionate manifesto of Christian freedom against any relapse into the bondage of the Law. Paul opens Chapter 3 with a piercing interrogation that heals to set free, Galatians, fools, who has enchanted you not to obey the truth?O foolish Galatians, who have been bewitched, and do not obey the truth. The word is grave. The enchantment is not a light delusion, but a spell that blinds the eyes before which Jesus Christ was announced as crucified. He who receives the cross as a source of justification and returns to the works of the Law does not correct the faith, but betrays it. Returning to the Law after the Cross is to erase the Cross.

The decisive question is posed in the following verse, and Paul seeks but one answer: Have you received the Spirit? From works of the law or from hearing of faith?By works of the Law or by hearing of faith. The Greek expression “Do you hear faith?”It does not designate a theoretical knowledge, it designates the ear that yields to the Word and surrenders itself to it. The holy and spiritual Law reveals sin and awakens the thirst for the Savior, but it does not have the power to justify what it can only accuse. It was the preaching of the Gospel, received in faith, that brought down the Spirit upon the Galatians and worked wonders in them. What began in the Spirit cannot be completed in the flesh. The new life is not produced, it is received, and it is received by listening.

II. The prayer that dares to insist

The Gospel extends the lesson of Paul on the register of prayer, because the faith that listens is also the faith that asks. Jesus narrates the man who, at midnight, knocks at his friend’s door seeking three loaves of bread for the unexpected guest. The friend had already fallen asleep, but he yields, not out of friendship but because of the persistence. The Greek word is strong. “Unthought”The audacity without shame of those who dare to insist. The Lord does not portray a God reluctant to yield, but rather teaches, by contrast, that if a human heart yields to persistent insistence, the Father in heaven will not keep waiting for those who approach Him with the same steadfast audacity.

The triple promise that sustains the entire prayerful life of the Church: “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened to you.” The verbs are in the present continuous tense. “Hear, O!”I asked and continued to ask, because prayer is not a single act, but a permanent breath of the soul. And Jesus concludes with the argument from the lesser to the greater. If a earthly father, evil while a sinner, knows how to give good things to his children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask for it. Note the peak of the text. Where Matthew writes “good things,” Luke writes… The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The supreme gift that prayer achieves is not this or that benefit, but God Himself who is communicated.

III. The grace that precedes and the faith that perseveres

The two readings converge at the heart of the doctrine of grace. The faith that justifies the Galatians and the prayer that obtains the Spirit are the same movement seen from two angles, that of origin and that of duration. Paul states that the Spirit is received through listening, Luke shows that this listening matures into persistent supplication. The words of the Apostle to the Romans apply here,fides ex auditu, auditus autem per verbum Christi

Faith comes from listening, and listening is through the Word of Christ, in Romans 10:17. First, God speaks, then the believer listens, and from this listening arises the request. The initiative is always from grace.

Therefore, it is understood why the insistence of the parable has nothing to do with merit that forces divine intervention. Perseverance in prayer is not the work of a disguised Law, but the faith that expands in time, that refuses to treat God’s silence as the absence of God. Saint Augustine taught this accurately by saying that God delays the gift to widen the desire, and widens the desire to be able to fill what he has expanded. To pray is not to overcome the resistance of the Father, but to let the Father overcome the narrowness of our hearts. Thus, the saving faith is not a passive belief nor a trust that dispenses the Law of love, but a living surrender that listens, asks, and hopes against all hope.

IV. Mary, the praying one who persevered until the Spirit

None of the readings mention the Virgin, yet both describe her. Mary is the creature in whom the listening of faith and persistent prayer reached perfect fullness. In the presence of the angel, she did not invoke works or titles, but listened to the Word and responded with the fiat, “Be it done to me according to your word,” in Luke 1:38. At that moment, what Paul demanded from the Galatians was fulfilled in her, to receive the Spirit by the pure consent of faith. Not coincidentally, the same Luke who teaches us to ask for the Holy Spirit today is the evangelist who presents her as kecharitomene, the one filled with grace, the one on whom the Spirit descended before any of our requests.

Tradition contemplated in her the perfect face of the prayer of the Church. After the Ascension, the disciples persevered unanimously in supplication.cum Maria matre Iesu

With Mary, the mother of Jesus, according to Acts 1:14. The Theotokos is in the Cenacle, at the center of the community that, obedient to the word of today, knocks at the door of heaven asking for the promised Spirit. And the Spirit descends at Pentecost. The mother who first received Him at the Annunciation becomes the model of prayer for one who implores Him for the nascent Church. The Second Vatican Council gathered this certainty when it invoked her, in Lumen Gentium 62, under the titles of Advocata, Auxiliatrix, Adiutrix, Mediatrix – Advocate, Helper, Assistant, Mediator – without such office obscuring the unique mediation of Christ, before receiving from Him all Her strength.

In Cana, when there was a shortage of wine, she did not impose solutions, but presented the need and trusted, “Do whatever He tells you,” in John 2:5. This is the anaïdeia of the saints, the humble audacity that persists without imposing. The Virgin teaches us today to distinguish the faith that saves from the agitation that grows weary. Let us not be content with easy answers nor treat prayer as a formula to secure favors. Let us ask, with her, for the gift that sums up all gifts. Whoever asks for the Spirit receives God Himself. And whoever, like Mary, perseveres in the listening of faith, will see the word fulfilled in themselves, for grace always precedes and perseverance never shames.