Year of Prayer with Benedict XVI: Persevering like Jacob

In his catechesis for the audience of May 25, 2011, Benedict XVI illustrates his teaching on the need for perseverance in prayer with the famous biblical story of Jacob’s struggle with the angel. 

Let’s briefly summarize the context of the story. Jacob, who stole his father’s blessing from his brother Esau after having convinced him to give up his birthright for a plate of lentils, had to take refuge with his uncle. After a few years, he returns home and is about to meet his brother. But on the night before this decisive meeting, he is attacked by a man who turns out to be an angel! 

The struggle lasted all night until morning (Gen 32:23-32). Who won: the patriarch or the angel? The text is ambiguous on this point. On the one hand, Jacob’s hip is dislocated, but on the other, the angel acknowledges that Jacob wrestled with God and won. Jacob won because he got what he wanted: to be blessed by God. His prayer was answered!

Benedict XVI notes that the story is rich in lessons about prayer. When he accepted the wrestling match, Jacob’s aim was to be blessed by God. This all-night struggle reflects Jacob’s perseverance in this quest. He did not let go of the angel until he had obtained what he wanted. 

In other words, this struggle is the image of how prayer is sometimes a spiritual battle. Pope Benedict reminds us that this is how the entire Church tradition has interpreted it. To pray without ceasing, with perseverance: This is the lesson of the story of Jacob’s struggle.

Benedict XVI draws another lesson from the biblical story. Until now, Jacob had been a resourceful and cunning man. Now, with this struggle, he understands that he will not receive divine blessing by the usual means of calculation and expediency, but as a divine gift. That’s why he asks the angel tirelessly for it throughout the night.

Unprotected — he is alone in the middle of the ford where the struggle takes place, having asked all his retinue to leave ahead of him — and having given up all cunning and deceit, Jacob can now receive the blessing freely. This is first and foremost a grace from God.

Here again, Benedict XVI notes that the Bible instructs us profitably: When we pray to God, before putting forward our merits, let us first think that God’s answer will be pure generosity on his part. He is a loving Father and, strictly speaking, he owes us nothing.

Finally, at the end of the struggle, the angel gives the patriarch a new name: Israel. Benedict XVI underlines the ambiguity of the text. If, on the one hand, Jacob has conquered (the angel says so), on the other hand, God gives him a new name and thus a new identity. In the Bible, after all, a name is not an administrative convention, but represents the substance of the person who bears it.

So, who won? Jacob, because he received the blessing he asked for? But, he was wounded at the hip. What’s more, his new identity comes not from himself, but from God. On this subject, Benedict XVI remarks that when the object of our spiritual struggle is our relationship with God, there comes a time when we must recognize that, like the patriarch, we are wounded at the hip, because God can only bless us if we recognize our weakness. And Jacob recognizes this weakness precisely by asking relentlessly for blessing. In this way, prayer is at once a question of strength, of struggle, of perseverance, but also of admitting our weakness. 

There are times in our lives when we finally see it’s no longer useful to trick people, as Jacob did with his brother, but to ask God for what’s essential. At such moments, let’s remember the example of Isaac and Rebekah’s son, Jacob: our prayer will require strength, perseverance, and humility.

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