Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Stretching Desire Of Prayer

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 3.2.23 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

First Week of Lent
Matthew 7:7–12

Friends, today’s Gospel urges us to persist in prayer.
The Lord wants us to ask with persistence, even stubbornness.

Now, we must not think of God as becoming exasperated by our prayer of petition,
but the clear implication is that we will get what we want through persistence:
"Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you."

How do we make sense of this?
For me, the best explanation is offered by St. Augustine.
He said that God doesn’t always give us immediately what we ask for,
and in fact, he compels us to ask again and again.
The Lord wants to stretch us, expanding our desire
so as to receive the gift he desires to give us.

If we got everything we wanted, right away and without effort,
we wouldn’t appreciate what we’ve received, and we wouldn’t really be capable of taking it in.
It would be like pouring new wine into old, shrunken wineskins,
resulting in a loss of both the skins and the wine.

So if the gift doesn’t come right away, don’t despair;
rather, feel your very soul expanding in anticipation.

[MurphsLaw]

+++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."+++