"Dear Brothers and Sisters, in our catechesis on prayer, we have seen that Jesus prayed to his Father with perseverance. Three parables in Luke's Gospel emphasize how we too need to be constant in our prayer. The first parable, in which a man asks for help from a friend in the middle of the night and does not give up until his friend responds teaches us the need to pray with insistence. In the second parable we see in the widow who persists in asking the unrighteous judge for justice, the importance of patience. The third parable, that of the publican and the Pharisee at prayer in the Temple, reveals that God responds to those who pray with humility. We see these three attitudes - insistence, patience and humility - reflected in the saints who persevered in prayer through moments of darkness when God seemed to be silent or absent. May we continue to persevere in prayer conscious that we never pray alone, but with Christ himself, in the power of the Holy Spirit. As Saint Augustine succinctly puts it: Jesus "prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our Head, and as our God he is the one to whom we pray."