Thursday in the First Week of Lent, March 2, 2023

Matthew 7, 7-12

Jesus said to his disciples: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.  Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.”

The Church presents a second Gospel Reading featuring the Lord’s teachings on prayer as though to reemphasize its necessity, as yesterday’s Gospel Reading was also about prayer.  Considering the Gospel Readings as a series during this first week of Lent, it is as though the Church were presenting almsgiving and fasting as the obligatory means by which we prepared for prayer.  

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  The Lord Jesus does not say, “Let you ask”, or “If you ask”.  The Greek text shows him using the imperative mood.  He is making a command.  Because the imperative is in the present tense, the Lord is also commanding us to pray continually, not now and then.  This asking and seeking, then, calls for perseverance on our part.  Someone may point out that God knows what we need and so we do not have to ask for it.  He might cite Matthew 6, 8: “Your Father knows what is needful for you before you ask him.”  The Lord Jesus does not say this to discourage his followers from praying but rather to give them confidence that their Father in heaven will give them what they need.  At the same time, he commands them to ask for it.  The act of asking, especially when engaged in over time, conditions us to be good and grateful receivers.  It is an acknowledgment of God’s power and supremacy and of our insufficiency and weakness.  This in turn leads us to live more fully the life to which the Lord Jesus calls us, and will make us, through our virtuous actions, part of God’s answers to the prayers of our neighbors.  The Lord commands us to pray because he knows us well and he knows that our pride often kicks at us in resistance to calling upon God.  It says to us: You are intelligent and capable enough to take care of your own needs.  You do not need to pray.  Or, maybe pray, but only when you have run out of every other option.  Our pride tells us: You are self-sufficient, you are autonomous.  Every man is an island.  You need to help yourself and not depend on anyone else.  This kind of thinking always leads to disaster, and it always has, beginning in Eden.

We are given a command, but we are also issued a promise on which we can rely: “It will be opened to you.”  That is, it will be opened to us when we are best prepared for it to be opened to us, and so the necessity to give alms and to fast.  With the help of God’s grace, these prepare us spiritually even more than working out with our bodies prepares us physically.  “Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish?”  And in the case that we fast, give alms, and persevere in prayer for something that would ultimately harm us, the Lord will answer our prayer with a great good that will help us.

“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.”  This verse may seem not to fit the Gospel Reading to this point, but we are reminded by the Lord’s words here of the great importance of virtuous living if we are to gain the objects for which we pray.  The Lord God is not obliged to give us anything at all, but he does so out of his wonderful mercy.  But the wicked person who expects God to give him what he wants is a fool.  What good he gains in this life comes only as an indirect consequence of the good another does for another person, so that Jesus can say that the rain falls on the just and the unjust.  

Let us obey the Lord’s command to pray continuously, thereby gaining what we need to please him and at the same time learning the language of heaven.