Homily: Thursday of the 1st Week of Lent 2016 - Prayer of Surrender

During Ordinary Time, our Gospel readings typically are taken in sequential order.  During Lent, our Gospel readings are organized more according to the different Lenten themes: fasting, conversion, liberation, penance, almsgiving.  Today’s Gospel from Matthew comes at the tail-end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and here, Jesus revisits the subject of prayer.

He encourages his disciples to ask, to seek, and to knock with the expectation that God will respond.  So here, we have a teaching about essential elements of authentic prayer: confidence and trust.
But, those are some pretty big promises today, aren’t they?  “Ask, and you will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  It sounds as if the Father will give us virtually anything we ask for, regardless of what is best for us.

But we must consider the context of these promises.  The Sermon on the Mount is a teaching on the kingdom of heaven and the Holy Will of God.  So, in context, Jesus is saying that the Father wants to give all who will ask, seek, and knock, the blessings that enable His Will to be realized on earth as it is in heaven.

Notice, Jesus doesn’t say, “ask, and you will receive what you asked for”, “seek, and you’ll find the thing you were looking for”.  Rather, we ask, and God gives what we need in order to be faithful to His Holy Will.

Queen Esther, in the first reading today, she knows how to pray.  Her first act is complete submission—she lays prostrate all day, and her prayer is “ help me, who am alone and have no one but you,
O LORD, my God...save us from our enemies”.  That’s humility, surrender, trust, and that’s the essence of prayer.

Not controlling God and telling God that he has to do things “my way”, but rather, laying prostrate before God and humbly admitting that He alone has power to save us.

When we talk about Lenten prayer, how during Lent we are to intensify our prayer lives, we aren’t necessarily talking about increasing the amount of prayer, though for most of us, that’s probably a good idea.  Rather, Lenten prayer seeks to make our hearts more like the hearts of Jesus and His Blessed Mother, more trusting, more obedient, deeper and purer surrender and confidence in the will of God, for his glory, and the salvation of souls.