Last week, we heard my favorite Gospel passage. “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door shall be opened.” Even as a kid, I found such comfort in the promise of Jesus to all of us, as children of God the Loving Father. What’s more, there are stories of my own life, where as a child, I asked and received the unreasonable, the miraculous. I remember praying for snow with my friends, and the next day, in Beaumont, Texas, which is swampy and sea level, it snowed –and what’s more, the snow stayed all day. We have video. My brothers and I made a snowman. You need an old fashioned projector to thread the film, but we have it.
As an adult, I still held tight to this reality, ask and you shall receive, knowing it to be true, knowing times when I’ve felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to ask, and times when I’ve just asked, and begged because I could do nothing else. On Sunday, the Gospel somehow hit deeper despite having always loved it, heard it, and believed it with all my heart. God does that with scripture, we can always go further and further in.
We’re seeking to swim into eternity.
The priest talked about how we can pray for something good, –a new job, a spouse, our child who is sick, someone we love who is far from the faith, an end to war, and the reality remains, we don’t get the job, we don’t meet the person, sometimes people don’t get well, people wander far, peace remains elusive. Why hasn’t God answered the prayers I’ve made? What came to me was the understanding, despite everything, that God always gives us more than we need, even if we do not get what we expressly want.
The goal of all prayer, is to grow deeper in love with God. We need only look at the world to see people who have every need gratified, at how profoundly miserable they can be. Success, wealth, power, fame, none of these things bring joy, none guarantee a single breath of air or heart beat more. Absent God, these gifts can sate appetites but not bring about joy. Absent seeking God, they will only leave one seeking more, and like an addict, enjoying it less.
Knowing that every word Christ speaks is true, we can trust when He says, “Ask,” and so we should be engaged in petitioning Heaven, for those we love and even more so, for those we whether knowingly or not, struggle to love. We are made for Heaven, so we must be about the business of praying and loving others, working to chip away at the Hell that sin seeks to establish in all our lives.
What I also understood later in the week, as we walked along the ocean shore, was God is the source of all joy. We cannot keep it, nor can we create it. I can hold a cup full of ocean in my hands temporarily, but the ocean in all its fullness remains, and eventually, the ocean slips through my fingers and I must return to cup more if I would have more.
Joy, grace, all gifts are like that, they come from God, and they are only sustained through God –and if I want more, I must return again to the source of all that more. The more is meant for giving, not hoarding –fitting in with this week’s Gospel.
Imagine what online and in real life life would be like, if every time we came across someone disagreeable, or heard of violence on the news, or felt hurt or angered by what we heard or read, we prayed for an ocean of graces to pour on those people’s lives. We would know that the Heavens would pour down untold gifts like snow, a generous portion, shaken down, unto their laps and ours. Imagine how visible the joy of witnessing lives overflowing with the ocean of God’s love. The world would hold more mercy, more peace, more hope, more kindness, more joy, more friends than silver, gold, oil, power, fame, followers, crypto, diamonds, or any other commodity, and be a richer place to live for it.
Let us be about the business of being part of that more we are called to witness and to carry out.
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