Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter, May 23, 2020

John 16:23b-28

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete. I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father. On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

“Whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”  St. Thomas Aquinas says that the Lord sets down seven conditions for prayer.  First, we should ask for spiritual goods, and temporal goods only inasmuch as they serve the spiritual.  Second, that a person should persevere in prayer.  Third, prayer should be made in union with others.  Fourth, a person should pray with child-like love for the Father.  Fifth, prayer should be made with humility.  Sixth, the prayer should be made expressing the desire for God to answer it in his own time, and in his own way.  Seventh, one should pray for himself, even in preference to others.  Praying thus, we come before the Lord as truly seeking that his will may be done in our lives, conforming ourselves ever more to Jesus Christ, and not seeking to impose our will on God.

It is not easy to pray in this way, for we must fight our deep-seated pride in order to do it.  Prayer is submission to the will of God.  We may want some good earnestly, even desperately, and so we beg God for it,  But we must remember that “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6, 8).  He possesses all power to answer any prayer, for “All things are possible for God” (Luke 1, 37).  He will give us a better thing than we ask for, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Luke 1, 37).  And he will give what we ask for, or that which is better than we ask for, in his good time: “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.  You open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing” (Psalm 145:15–16).  

We should ask all things in the name of Jesus, and for this reason, the Mass and Divine Office prayers end with some variation of “We ask this through Christ our Lord.”  The Lord Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us in heaven: “He holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues for ever.  Consequently, he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 8, 24-25).  Since the Father loves his Son’s name, we should speak it only with great care, also keeping in mind that it is in his name alone that we are saved (cf. Acts 4, 12).