"ASK AND YOU WILL RECEIVE."

Homily for Oct. 8^th, 2020: Luke 11:5-13.

This story about the friend coming at midnight emphasizes two things: the need for persistence in prayer, and God’s readiness to hear us: “Ask and you will receive,” Jesus says. “Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Continuing to pray when God seems to answer only with silence increases our desire and strengthens our faith, as physical exercise strengthens the heart, lungs, and muscles. St. Gregory the Great, who was bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, wrote: “All holy desires grow by delays; and if they fade because of these delays, they were never holy desires.”

To illustrate his teaching about prayer, Jesus reminds us that God is our loving heavenly Father, and we are his children. God is more loving, however, than the even best human father or mother -- and wiser. Hence, he will not always answer our prayers in the way, or at the time, that we think he should. When God refuses something we pray for, it is always in order to give us something better.  

 The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen told a story about a little girl who prayed, before Christmas, for a hundred dolls. She didn’t get even one. Her unbelieving father, who had taunted both her and her mother for praying at all, couldn’t resist saying on Christmas day: “Well, God didn’t answer your prayers, did he?” To which the child gave the beautiful answer: “Oh yes, He did. He said No!” In my own ninety-second year, I am grateful to have lived long enough to be able to thank God for answering some of my prayers, Not yet; and others, No.

Even when we have done our best to explain and understand prayer, however, it remains a mystery: not in the sense that we can understand nothing about prayer, but that what we can understand is partial only. We can no more explain “how prayer works” than we can explain how the human mind works, or the human heart.

Above all, therefore, we need to ask for the gift of Gods Holy Spirit: the fire of God’s love, to burn away everything in us that is contrary to God, and to light up our way; his wisdom to see what is right and true, and to embrace it when seen. That prayer will always be answered, Jesus promises us. “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”