“Ask, and you will receive; seek and you shall find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Lk 11:9) These words Jesus speaks to his disciples can be quite challenging to grasp, as they seem to go against our experience of prayer. It is certainly not the case, at least in my life, that whatever I have asked God in prayer I have then received. There are lots of things I never obtained, even though I had prayed for them. There are plenty of doors I wished had been opened, but they remained closed. Our prayers, especially our petitions, arise from our desires, from our aspirations, and what we see as necessary things for our happiness. However, the truth is that we are often blind to the things that will truly satisfy our desires. We believe that “if I only I had this job,” or “that car,” or “if only this person noticed me,” or “if I had this much money,” etcetera … “then I would be happy.” Our desires are not in themselves wrong, but often what we endeavour to fulfill them with misses the mark. It is God who gives rise to our desires, for it is Him whom our hearts seek. Therefore, it is Him who knows how to fulfill them; it is Him who knows what will truly bring us happiness, what will bring us closer to Him. Indeed, as the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Is 55:8-9) We do not know how to pray, nor what to ask for. Hence, our approach to prayer must be that of the disciples: “Lord, teach us how to pray.” Inherent in this request is already a recognition that the disciples’ prayer was not like Jesus’, that is, that in prayer, He received much more than they did, that when he asked, he did receive. Responding to their request, Jesus teaches the disciples the Our Father, which hinges on the recognition of God as Father and us as his children. This recognition presupposes that it is the Father that knows best what his children need, that He wants to give it to them, and thus, that it is our will that needs to be brought into conformity with His, and not the other way around. Hence, Jesus’ prayer was always for the Father’s will to be brought about in His life. In such abandonment, He ever received what He asked for. Admittedly, we sometimes may grow discouraged in our prayer when our experience seemingly contradicts Jesus’ words: “Seek, and you shall find.” However, Jesus does not say this to deceive us, but because He knows that what our hearts truly desire is God alone, and when it is Him that we seek, we shall indeed find Him, for it is His very own desire to give Himself to us.<\/p>\n
Santiago Torres<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta<\/p>\n Fot. Ravi Roshan \/Unsplash.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,18],"tags":[103,199],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-strona-glowna-najnowsze","category-strona-glowna-slider","tag-pray","tag-santiago-torres"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n