DAILY GOSPELCOMMENTARY:
“ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE” (Lk 11:5–13).
Effective prayer
Jesus said to his disciples: “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.
“And I tell you, ask and you will receive; 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. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
Gospel Commentary from the Navarre Bible, Commentary to the Gospel of St. Luke (with permission)
- 5-10 One of the essential features of prayer is trusting perseverance. By this simple example and others like it (cf. Lk 18:1-7) our Lord encourages us not to desist in asking God to hear us.
- “Persevere in prayer. Persevere even when your efforts seem barren. Prayer is always fruitful” (St. Josemaria, The Way, 101).
- 9-10 “Do you see the effectiveness of prayer when it is done properly? Are you not convinced like me that, if we do not obtain what we ask God for, it is because we are not praying with faith, with a heart pure enough, with enough confidence, or that we are not persevering in prayer the way we should? God has never refused nor will ever refuse anything to those who ask for his graces in the way they should. Prayer is the great recourse available to us to get out of sin, to persevere in grace, to move God’s heart and to draw upon us all kinds of blessings from heaven, whether for the soul or to meet our temporal needs” (St John Mary Vianney, Selected Sermons, Fifth Sunday after Easter).
- 11-13 Our Lord uses the example of human parenthood as a comparison to stress again the wonderful fact that God is our Father, for God’s fatherhood is the source of parenthood in heaven and on earth (cf. Eph 3:15).
- “The God of our faith is not a distant being who contemplates indifferently the fate of men — their desires, their struggles, their sufferings. He is a Father who loves his children so much that he sends the Word, the Second Person of the most Blessed Trinity, so that by taking on the nature of man he may die to redeem us. He is the loving Father who now leads us gently to himself, through the action of the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts” (St. Josemaria, Christ is passing by, 84).
- 13 The Holy Spirit is God’s best gift to us, the great promise Christ gives his disciples (cf. Jn 5:26), the divine fire which descends on the Apostles at Pentecost, filling them with fortitude and freedom to proclaim Christ’s message (cf. Acts 2).
- “The profound reality which we see in the texts of holy Scripture is not a remembrance from the past, from some golden age of the Church which has since been buried in history Despite the weaknesses and the sins of every one of us, it is the reality of today’s Church and the Church in all times. ‘I will pray to the Father,’ our Lord told his disciples, ‘and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you for ever’. Jesus has kept his promise. He has risen from the dead and, in union with the eternal Father, he sends us the Holy Spirit to sanctify us and to give us life” (St. Josemaria, Christ is passing by, 128).
VIDEO COMMENTARY ON TODAY’S 1ST READING
TOPIC: HOW IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER IN HEAVEN?
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