Divine agency
Thursday of the First Week of Lent
Gospel: Matthew 7:7-12
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031325.cfm
This passage led to a lot of frustration for me growing up. Given the way I understood it, I was left very frustrated; God wants to help you, you’re just not doing it right. What I heard was that I need to ask harder, knock harder, and seek harder in prayer. God would answer anything as long as we came to God fully in the right way with the right intent. Yet the more I prayed, I didn’t seem to get direct answers to my prayers or it could be a hit or miss. The evidence wasn’t there either on what made one prayer get answered and another one not. That said, over time it has now become part of my prayer practice through a prayer known as the Efficacious Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a prayer that was regularly practiced by St. Pio of Pietrelcina. It wasn’t until reading and reflecting on today’s gospel that I was able to recognize why it changed.
This gospel is less about prayer and more about action and agency. God uses all means within creation to connect with us which means we too are God agents in the world. God had blessed us with so many gifts by creating us in God’s image and likeness. We have the divine spark within us that is always ready and able to answer when someone asks, to show when someone is seeking, and to open the door when someone knocks. When we are in such need as well, it is good to turn to God in prayer, but God also wants us to turn to the divine spark in others and in ourselves. We are called to fill the needs of the world with what God has given us and the world is here to fill the needs that go beyond us. The struggle we experience is two fold:
We don’t ask, seek, or knock.
We don’t answer, find, or open.
God’s economy works if we participate in it. What makes this so evident in this gospel is how it ends. Jesus at first describes how much more giving God is beyond a parent, but then he concludes by saying, "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets." This is the golden rule, the sentence after goes on further to say that it is the law and the prophets. God is calling us to agency. It’s not just the rule, it is the prophetic voice. It is what will make God’s kingdom a reality. Not only must we ask, seek and knock, we must answer, find, and open for those who come to us.
Let us be grateful for how God has been shown to us through the aid of others and may we return the same.
