Persevere

This seems to be God's message for me. Yesterday evening I did a little reading before going to sleep. Mother Anna Maria Canopi responded to an interview about "love, poverty and sobriety". She said that we should continue to love even if it is unreciprocated. In fact, we should love all the more because in being treated with indifference, in being rejected or even persecuted, we all the more resemble Jesus.
The second reading of the Office of Readings also speak about perseverance, not to get tired in doing what I have to do, not to grow weary in asking. If God immediately gives us consolations, we lose the opportunity to show love and hope.
The Gospel reading is the parable of the insistent widow and the corrupt judge. In the end she obtains what she was asking for because of her perseverance.
So why then do I persevere? It could be for many reasons: to "twist the other's arm" so that I finally obtain what I am asking; to express the hope that is in me; to show a patient and unconditional love; to conform myself more and more unto Christ.
I would never arrive at a perfectly pure motivation. There is always the personal element that plays a part (sometimes quite a big part) in my choices. But with awareness and a few tears here and there, slowly, through God's great love and mercy I persevere.