(Jesus teaching in the synagogue. Woodcut by Gustave Dore)
The Our Father is a prayer that is central to Christianity and over the centuries much was been said, preached, and written about this perfect prayer. What I would like to focus on today are the words in the words in the gospel in which Jesus says, “ask and your will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open to you.”
During my diaconal formation, I spent 5 hours every Wednesday for 9 months as a chaplain in a Twin City hospital of 400 beds. I remember visiting a very elderly man one night. He was despondent and very angry. I knew the visit was going to be short. Before I left the room, I asked him if he wanted to pray. He glared at me and responded with a very emphatic, “Hell, no!” I asked him if it was okay for me to pray for him. His reply to me was, “Do whatever you want, it won’t do any good!” Respecting his wishes, I left the room and later that night prayed for him. At one time or another in our lives, all of us have harbored similar sentiments as that elderly man.
Yet, Jesus tells us in today’s gospel, “ask and you will receive, seek and you will find.” It’s not that I don’t believe Jesus, but my experience has been that for which I asked God I did not receive, and that for which I asked God to seek has not been found. If that is your experience in life too, know that even Jesus did not always get his prayers answered. In the passion accounts of both Mark and Matthew’s gospels, Jesus prays in desperation to God the Father that the cup of his passion and death be taken from him. God remains silent. It is only in Luke’s Passion that God sends an angel to comfort Jesus. However, Jesus still dies in agony. When Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” again, God remains silent. Is our God capricious, mean-spirited, temperamental and unfeeling? The answer to this question is an emphatic no. I think some of the problem we have in experiencing prayers not being answered is how we think about prayer.
Prayer is not meant to manipulate God into doing something for us. That is how the pagan religions thought prayer worked. You do something, you sacrifice something or someone, and that forces the gods to do something for you. I see some of this on Facebook. The post will say, if you respond to the post by typing “Amen” in the commentary, God will do a miracle for you. Really? Typing Amen to a Facebook post will force God to do something? That is plain nonsense. That is not the way prayer works.
Prayer is not superstitious magic. Saying a certain prayer, a certain number of times, on certain days will not manipulate God to give us what we want. I remember visiting a young man in the hospital. Though baptized a Catholic, he hadn’t been to church for a long time. He had a rosary dangling from around his neck like a necklace and felt optimistic about his health outcome because he had “the beads.” When I visited him again a couple of weeks later, he was angry because “the beads” were not working. He thought that by just wearing the beads around his neck like some magic talisman, he would be cured of his illness. I took the beads from around his neck, placed them in his hands and showed him how to pray the rosary.
When we pray to God we must discern carefully that for which we are asking of God. Jesus asks his disciples this question today. “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?” When we pray to God for some need, if God perceives that for which we are asking is really a snake instead of a fish, God will not give us what we want. If God perceives that for which we are really asking is a scorpion instead of an egg, God will not give us what we want. Like any good parent, God will give to us only that which is best for us, that which will help fulfill who we really are as children of God. This requires us to do a serious assessment of what we truly need to become the person God created us to be.
This is why the most important part of today’s Gospel is the ending. Jesus concludes today’s gospel saying, “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?” What Jesus is saying that of all for which we pray to God, the most important prayer we can ask of God is to give us the Holy Spirit, so that we are able to discern, to know that for which we truly need from God.
Back in 2011, when I had my first hip replacement, I prayed to God for a successful surgery with no complications. I ended up with a MRSA infection, almost dying from the antibiotic that was suppose to kill the infection, losing the artificial hip, and going for six months without a left hip while the infectious disease doctor tried to discover the right combination of antibiotics that would kill the infection without killing me, went through a total of five surgeries before I finally had the second hip replacement. During that nightmarish time, while I prayed for a cure, that for which I really ended up praying was for understanding, the answer to the question, “where is the grace in all of this.” You see, when Jesus asked God to take the chalice of his passion death from him, he concluded the prayer with, “Not my will but your will be done.” I prayed to God in order to understand what God wanted me to learn from my experience. The infection was eventually killed. I ended up getting a new hip. However, my prayer for understanding? God has answered that prayer many times since. Five years later, I continue to grow from the answers I am still receiving.
My friends, may we always begin our prayers of need to God by praying first for the Holy Spirit to help us know that for which we really need, and then pray for that need. If we do that, then we will ask and will receive. We will seek and we will find. And, any door we knock upon will be opened up for us.
