9th of March (English)

Gospel text

(Mt 7,7-12):

Jesus said to his disciples, «Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks, receives; whoever seeks, finds; and the door will be opened to him who knocks. Would any of you give a stone to your son when he asks for bread? Or give him a snake, when he asks for a fish? As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So, do to others whatever you would that others do to you: there you have the Law and the Prophets».

The application

How to apply this gospel in our daily life, while many of us are very often disappointed because of our feelings that our prayers however sincere they may be remain unheard? While reading this gospel which part of it that I should give much attention? Where this gospel leads me to live today?

Though I don’t have answers to all these questions, I would however propose you all to mediate our ‘God image’ and compare this with the image that Jesus presents to us today. I sincerely believe His ‘God image’ is the best that we can have today. Jesus is telling us that God is filled with goodness and thus we are called to create our own God image on what Jesus has said than what we have learned or heard. Once we learn to see God, as Jesus sees His Father, our relationship within ourselves, with others and finally with God get a new lease of life. It is hear that we learn to see the presence of others in our life and learn to love them as God loves us.  Let me explain

It is on this ‘God image’ depend our faith and our relation with God. It is on this same image that we have created, helps us concretely to build our relationship with God. If this image is wrong, everything gets wrong. It is equally applied even to us and our own self. The self or being that we are, depend largely the way we look at ourselves and the way we are moulded by our thinking pattern, actions or even by the evens and relationships. It is important that we find out the original ‘self-image’ of ourselves as God has created us than what we have built since our childhood. The more we are close to the original self, the more we get close to divine self. The more we are far away to our original self, the more we are away from God and also from others. Because of this distance that we have created, (very often in our ignorance) we find difficult to understand God, others and even ourselves, and by consequence we feel that our prayers are not listened.

«For everyone who asks, receives; whoever seeks, finds»

Fr. Joaquim MESEGUER García
(Sant Quirze del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)

Today, Jesus reminds us of the need and power of prayer. We cannot understand our Christian life without being related to God, and in this relation, prayer takes a central place. While we live in this world, we Christians find ourselves on a pilgrimage road, but our prayer gets us closer to God, opens up the door of his immense love and brings forward the Heaven delights. This is why, our Christian life is a constant request and search: «Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened» (Mt 7:7), says Jesus to his disciples.

At the same time, the prayer gradually turns a stone heart into a flesh heart: «As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!» (Mt 7:11). The best summary we can ask God can be found in Our Lord's Prayer: «Your kingdom come and your will be done, on earth as in heaven» (cf. Mt 6:10). We, therefore, cannot ask just anything in our prayers, but something which is really for our own good. If nobody wants to hurt himself, we should not want any damage for others, either.

We, sometimes, fail to see God's concern for us, for we find our prayers seemingly unanswered or may even feel God does not love us. In such moments, it will do us good to remember this advice from Saint Jerome: «It is certain God gives to he, who asks, that he, who seeks, finds, and that he, who knocks, will be opened: It is clearly seen that he, who has not received, who has not found, who has not been opened, is just because he did not know how to ask, how to seek nor how to knock at the door». Let us, therefore, ask God, in the first place, to give us a loving heart just like that of Jesus Christ.