Today’s Reflection
Gospel: Lk 11:1-13
July 24, 2022 | Sunday

Today’s Gospel

One day, Jesus was praying in a certain place; and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” And Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say this: Father, may your name be held holy, may your kingdom come; give us, each day, the kind of bread we need, and forgive us our sins; for we also forgive all who do us wrong; and do not bring us to the test.”

Jesus said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to his house in the middle of the night and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine who is traveling has just arrived, and I have nothing to offer him.’ Maybe your friend will answer from inside, ‘Don’t bother me now; the door is locked, and my children and I are in bed, so I can’t get up and give you anything.’ But I tell you, even though he will not get up and attend to you because you are a friend, yet he will get up because you are a bother to him, and he will give you all you need.

And so I say to you, ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For the one who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened.

If your child asks for a fish, will you give him a snake instead? And if your child asks for an egg, will you give him a scorpion? If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”

Today’s Reflection:

In the Gospel Reading, Jesus teaches us how to pray and then assures us in no uncertain terms that God answers our prayers. Seriously? A lot of our experiences run contrary to the Lord’s assurance. For several times and on many occasions, our prayers seem to have fallen on deaf ears. So often have we persistently pleaded with the Lord but he seems to have no power over the destructive forces of nature, life-threatening diseases, and other forms of evil.

That many of our fervent and persistent prayers remain unanswered suggests that storming heaven with prayers does not necessarily make God grant our pleas. Jesus nonetheless strongly exhorts us not just to be persistent in our prayers but to be shamelessly persistent in pleading with God. Just as a man awakened by his friend who is in need of food at midnight would get up and give whatever his friend needs because of his friend’s persistence, God shall grant our prayers (vv. 5-9). It must be noted that the Greek word for persistence here—ἀναίδεια—is best rendered as “shamelessness” (BDAG). Why then does the Lord exhort us to be shamelessly persistent in asking him for our needs despite the fact that many of our pleadings are left unanswered?

There is no definitive answer to this difficult question, but I have one point in mind. Prayers make us aware that we are profoundly related to God who is beyond our grasp, a God who is transcendent, a God who refuses to be domesticated. Jesus tells us to relate with this God in a very personal and intimate manner. This is indicated by the very first word of the Lord’s Prayer—a prayer which he teaches us today, namely, “Father” in the Aramaic sense of Abba (אבא). In our contemporary parlance, Abba is the equivalent of “daddy”, “papa”, “tatay”, etc.

Which brings us to ask: Why should we plead for our dire needs in a deeply personal and intimate manner with a God who cannot in any case be our beck and call, a God who is irreducible into a vending machine? Perhaps because doing so makes us realize who we are—frail human beings who are bound to death and who are prone to meaninglessness. Articulating our dire needs or telling it shamelessly and intimately to God as our “papa” somehow makes us realize our fundamental frailty. It also enables us to give vent to our fears, our desires, our hopes. Regularly doing so can provide us with fresh and liberating insights into many uncertainties and unanswerable questions in life. Praying for safety in our trips, for example, makes us realize that anything bad and deadly can happen in the course of our journey however safe our present means of transportation are.

Praying is in a way an act of letting go of things and events that are beyond our control. It is an act of surrender to God with whom we are profoundly connected and to whom we shall eventually return. /Vulnerasti, 2022