13 March 2025 - and keep on asking

 Today's Readings
(Audio)

 For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

When was the last time one of us experienced an answered prayer? Don't such answers seem to more rare than common? Aren't they so notable precisely because they aren't always occurring? Moreover, could something that was entirely regular and reliable even be considered miraculous? We do ask, but we don't always seem to receive. We seek, but we seem to become lost rather than finding the object of our desire. We knock, we throw stones at the windows, we try every strategy to get the attention of the one within, but we are often left out in the cold. What's going on here? If the words of Jesus are true, what are we doing wrong?

There are really only three reasons why a prayer might not be answered. One is a lack of persistence. We ask, seek, and knock, but we don't keep doing so as the text suggests. The text of the Amplified Bible is always helpful here:

Ask and keep on asking and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking and you will find; knock and keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you (see Matthew 7:7, Amplified).

This is consistent with the parables Jesus told about prayer. Both of that of the friend at night (see Luke 11:5-8) and that of the importunate widow (see Luke 18:1-8) speak of answers that were received only because individuals did not give up when most others would have done so. But unlike the protagonists in these parables, we don't hope to change God's mind, as though he would finally come to see our point of view. So why this insistence on persistence? As Benedict XVI noted in his encyclical Spe Salvi, Augustine said this is necessary in order to enlarge our hearts: "By delaying [his gift], God strengthens our desire; through desire he enlarges our soul and by expanding it he increases its capacity [for receiving him]" (see Spe Salve 33).

Another reason prayer we experience prayer not being answered is a lack of faith. Faith can move mountains, but doubt makes us unstable in all our ways as James reminds us in his epistle. He wrote, "let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind" (see James 1:6). Such faith cannot be faith in ourselves or the validity of our requests but rather in the goodness of God who desires to give good gifts to his children. It is often a lack of faith that leads to a lack of persistence. We slip into thinking that God isn't listening or he doesn't care. And this is part of what is meant by doubt.

The final reason why our prayers are not always answered is that sometimes we ask for the wrong things. The fact that God will not give such things to us is already apparent in that Jesus said he desires to give us good gifts. He is not so angry or vindictive as to give us what we ask if he knows it won't lead to our flourishing. James also reminds us of this danger, writing "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions" (see James 4:3). The good things of this world are not good absolutely. Only God is that. They are good relatively, when they help to lead us to God. But we can never know with certainty the ramifications or results to which receiving the blessings of this world might receive. This is why the parallel passage to today's Gospel from Matthew found in Luke says that God delights, not to give good things generally, but his Holy Spirit to those who ask (see Luke 11:13).

Therefore, if we ask in faith, persistently, for things pertaining to our salvation, we can have certainty that they will be granted. An addendum to this is that, according to Aquinas, we can't be absolutely certain of our prayers for others since their decision for or against salvation is not something we can or ought to override. Is prayer still valuable with such stipulations? Unfathomably so. It teaches us that which is of utmost importance and gives us courage to seek it no matter what, just as Esther did.

As a child I used to hear from the books of my forefathers
that you, O LORD, always free those who are pleasing to you.
Now help me, who am alone and have no one but you,
O LORD, my God.

Dan Gardener - As The Deer