Anna Is Our Advent Model

In the Parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1–8), a poor widow seeks justice. Day after day she goes to the judge, who “feared not God, neither regarded man,” and asks him to avenge her. Afraid of getting worn out (or getting a black eye), the judge finally relents; he does what he should have done the first time she sought his aid. 

It is clear in Jesus’s telling of the parable that we should in no way confuse God with the unjust judge. “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?” (18:7) And yet, God can often seem like that judge: He doesn’t respond when we call; situations don’t change; misery endures. The night remains dark, and the sky closed. Indeed, isn’t the reason why we “cry day and night unto” God precisely because he is like the unjust judge? 

Let’s recall Anna the Prophetess, the eighty-four-year-old widow who was at Christ’s presentation at the temple. St. Luke tells us how night and day, she “departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers” (2:37). Like Simeon, she was no doubt “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (2:25). Anna’s advent lasted years rather than weeks. But she was a woman of wisdom and knew where to be (the temple), what to do (fastings and prayers), and how persistent she had to be (night and day) as she waited for her reward.

Anna was among the most pious of saints ever to live. We know this because of her persistent devotion, but also because God did, in the end, make her worthy of the immeasurable gift of consolation—and not just her and Israel’s consolation, but the consolation of the whole world. She was among the first to see the Savior of the universe. I think Anna was possibly one of the very few saints who, so very unlike you and me, never thought of God as an unjust judge. Nor did she reproach him for what might seem like needless delay. Rather, pious Anna constantly meditated upon God’s gracious character.

In many translations of 18:7, Jesus asks: “Will he delay long over them?” The implication is that unlike the judge, God will not delay. But this reading fits neither with our experience—which tells us that God often delays—nor with Jesus’s encouragement to keep on praying, despite the long, drawn-out advent of our lives. Perhaps, therefore, we might read with the King James Version: “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?” God is marko-thymos—long-bearing, long-suffering, patient with us. Advent takes long because he is a long-suffering God.

Following Anna and the persistent widow, we keep pounding on heaven’s door. God does, in fact, delay—contrary to the intuition of many Bible translations. But the delay is due to his mercy.

Note the very first and last words of the parable: “He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (18:1). And then: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (18:8) God knows we are hardly like Anna—fasting and praying, night and day, in the temple precincts. He knows we are hardly persistent-widow material. And so he waits, prolonging the waiting of advent—that we might learn always to pray and not to faint; that we might yet put our faith in our long-suffering God.

This is not a theodicy parable. It is not God in the dock, with us questioning him as to why he delays our rescue. The truth is: You and I are the ones in the dock. Even when our needs are immense or our grief unbearable, and we cry out to God, we are still not like Anna. O holy Anna, that our piety might be like yours! O prayerful Anna, that our persistence might be like yours! O sweet Anna, that our faith and trust might be like yours! 

God hears our prayers to not tarry, not delay. “I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: Thou art my help and my deliverer; O Lord, make no tarrying” (Ps. 70:5). But he is a God of patience. And in response to our prayers, he gives us the gift of Advent, as he waits for repentance to come. He wants us to become more truly like Anna, so he can give us the gift of the consolation of Israel.