Today is the memorial feast of “Our Lady of the Holy Rosary”. Indeed, this month of October, we are reminded to pray the Holy Rosary, the best known and most practiced Prayer of Catholic faithful in the world. Through the Holy Rosary, we pray with Mary Our Mother to intercede for us to be “children of God”. In the line of the Gospel, we can say that unless your friends were truly a very close friend, you may hesitate in waking them and their family at midnight to ask to borrow some food. And even if it were a very close friend, you would probably hesitate for fear of disturbing them. But in this parable, the “friend” is God. Jesus just finished giving His disciples the “Our Father” prayer, and now He adds this parable as a way of expressing the great confidence and determination with which we must pray to the Father. The parable concludes by stating that even if the person in bed does not get up to meet the request, they will do so “because of his persistence.” And though God always is attentive to our prayer, our persistence is an essential quality we must have. When we pray to God with persistence, never doubting the goodness and generosity of God, God will pour forth upon us everything that is good. Of course, if our prayer is for something that is selfish or not in accord with the will of God, then all the begging in the world will not be effective. But when we pray as the “Our Father” prayer teaches us, then we can be certain that our fidelity to that prayer, prayed with the utmost trust and persistence, will affect the good gifts of the will of God in our lives. Prayer is our natural, human, spiritual and habitual communication with God, the necessary way in which we grow in the image of God.