SCRIPTURE READINGS TODAY, THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2014 Scripture today: Esther C:12, 14-16, 23 25; Psalm 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 7c-8; Matthew 7:7-12 Jesus said to his disciples: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him. “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:7-12) REFLECTION ON GETTING THE MEANING If there is one thing that is clear about the ways of God in revealing himself, it is that God takes his time in saying what he intends to say. He says one thing here, and he says another thing there. If we are to get the picture, we must look at many things. At the dawn of human history, God made it clear that the Serpent had not conquered. Fr. Ted TylerThe “woman” and “her seed” would resist: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall crush your head and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). But it took a long time indeed before the divine intent in this conflict was manifested in its detail. More clarity came in the prediction to Abraham that “by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (12:3). God was taking his time. The lines became a little clearer when Jacob, in blessing his sons the patriarchs, declared that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (49:10). Little by little a heavenly picture was being shown, and not everything was contained in any one declaration or manifestation. Rather, the hints kept coming. For instance, the prophet Nathan announced to David the remarkable promise, one that would seem to fly in the face of all lessons of history, that “your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever” (2 Samuel 7:16). Then there was the prophet Isaiah and his school. They too had various things to say. There was the coming Servant of Yahweh who would possess God’s Spirit, and who would, of all things, suffer. He would be “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house” and “cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people” (53:7-8). The Isaiahan oracles reached what we might even call their zenith in the prediction that “I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall bring all your brethren from all the nations as an offering to the Lord … to my holy mountain Jerusalem … all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord” (66:18-23). I do not mean here to discuss the prophecies as such – I am pointing to a pattern. It is that, if we wish to know what God has taught us in one text, we must take many things into account. That is to say, we cannot be “fundamentalist”, as it is termed. We must not think that the fundamentals of revealed religion are present and obvious in each single statement. God has taken his time to reveal his plan, and bit by bit the picture is revealed – and even so, we need a divinely-constituted oracle to help us interpret correctly. That divinely-assisted oracle, of course, is Christ’s Church. We ought allow the many rays shed by the holy Writings to light up each statement of those very Writings. It is the one divine Author who has guided their creation and composition, and whatever he says at one point is to be set within the context of what he says at the next or at further points. All this brings us to our wonderful Gospel passage today, in which our Lord tells his disciples that “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Does this mean that whenever and however and for whatever we ask, it will be given? Even ordinary natural reason would suggest that this cannot be the meaning, if we are speaking of a good and wise God. The obvious problem in all prayer of petition is knowing what is in our best interest. What would one say of a father of a child who gave to the child a loaded revolver, because the child insistently asked for it? The granting of such a request would be morally reprehensible and utterly unworthy of someone who is supposed to be good. Therefore the texts of inspired Scripture are to be read, to a point, using our reason. But then, too, the divine Author says other things at other moments which can throw light on the meaning of a particular text, because it is the same Author who has said all of it. There were times when our Lord was asked for things, and he did not grant them. When the mother of the sons of Zebedee together with her two sons came to our Lord with their request, our Lord asked what she and they wanted him to do for them – showing his willingness to accede. They wanted to be positioned at his right and his left in his glory. No, I cannot offer you that, he said – but he went on to predict something better. They would drink his chalice (Matthew 20: 20-23). Plainly, there are many things involved in the divine answer to petitions. But what is abundantly clear in our Gospel passage today is that our Lord wants us to ask for what we need. Let us put it in a different way, because we cannot be sure of what we really need, despite what we think we need. Our Lord wants us, in the first instance, to do the will of our heavenly Father, and to be solicitous for the fulfillment of his holy will. Let us then, when faced with all our daily needs, place them in his fatherly care. When considering this or that blessing, let us place ourselves in his presence and ask for the grace to know what is in accord with his holy will – and then to ask for it. Let us keep on asking, knowing, though, that he knows best. (E.J.Tyler)
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 15:40:17 +0000
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