Lenten Evening Prayer Reflection
Teresa Coda
Gospel MT 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.”
Like many people, I had varied career ambitions throughout my childhood, many of which are
documented by photos of me dressed up on elementary school career day. I was an artist in
kindergarten, a teacher in the first grade, and a nun in the second grade. I was doctor in third grade
and a spy in the fourth,
In the fifth grade, I read Cheaper by the Dozen and my eyes were opened to a whole new category of
jobs when I learned that the protagonist of this book is an Efficiency Expert. I was smitten with the
idea of running around with a stop watch, observing and timing people and processes and
strategizing improvements. With this new vision, the consistent theme of improvement began to
emerge in my vocational aspirations: dream jobs throughout my teens included Life Coach, Therapist,
and Motivational Speaker.
With this theme, it will probably come as no surprise that I have read a lot of self-help and selfimprovement books over the past decade and a half. There is a lot of garbage in these books, but
one piece of advice that has really stuck with me, that I think of often, is that when we make goals for
ourselves, they should be tied to actions, not outcomes. A goal of writing a book makes more sense
than a goal of publishing a book. A goal of running a marathon makes more sense than a goal of
winning a marathon. The reason for this is that we can work on our actions; but we can’t control the
outcomes. We can work on a difficult relationship, but we can’t necessarily fix it. We can spend more
time in prayer; we can’t ensure mystic union.
This piece of advice came to mind as I reflected on today’s gospel reading.
I’m a questioner by nature, and so when I read a passage like this one, one that says “ask and you
shall receive, seek and you will find,” I’m normally inclined to think, “well, what will I receive? What
will I find? We say that God answers our prayers, but what does that even mean? How does
answered prayer look? How do I know that what happens after I pray is even any different than what
would have happened had I not prayed?”
These are the questions that cause me to heave a big sigh and through up my hands crying,
“mystery!” I think of Madeline L’engel’s words about the Incarnation: Don’t try to explain the mystery
to me! It is further from being explainable than the furthest star in the furthest galaxy. It is love,
limitless love.” At my best, I embrace the questioning and surrender to the divine mystery that is God,
but at worst, my bafflement causes me to turn away from the questions — the grappling and the
wondering that I actually think are an essential part of any faith journey — and towards the Great
British Baking Show.
And that’s why I find the self-help advice to focus on action and not outcomes so helpful when looking
at this gospel passage. It gives me the freedom to not be sucked into the vortex of questioning
outcomes — the receiving, finding and opening doors — and instead, to focus my energy on
exploring the action that I can take in the dynamic and exciting human-divine relationship.
The thing is, while it is less baffling to look at action than outcome, the action that this passage
pushes us towards is not necessarily easy.
Knocking, and seeking, and asking are hard, for several reasons. First, they require humility. We
know this from our human experiences. It’s typically a lot easier to give help than to ask for help,
because asking for help requires vulnerability and admitting that I can’t do something on my own. I
think about this with the service opportunities that teens in our parish participate in. It’s probably
easier to be the student preparing the meal at Conway House or the Table than the young man or
woman needing to ask for it. It’s more fun to wrap those Christmas presents at My Brother’s Keeper
than it is to be the mom asking for them. It takes courage and humility to ask for help.
Asking also takes a certain amount of focus. You have to know what you want to be able to ask for it.
A central component of my prayer life is the daily examen, from Ignatian spirituality. It’s a method of
prayer in which, at the end of the day, you examine your day. With an awareness of God’s presence
and a sense of gratitude, you prayerfully review the past twenty four hours, paying attention to the
actions, the thoughts and the feelings of the day, as well as the thoughts and feelings that arise
throughout your examination. At the end of the examination, you pick one aspect of what you’ve just
reflected on, and pray about it. This is often where I get stuck. I’ll think, well, I had a hard time with
this, and I’m worried about that, and I’m feeling sheepish about something else, and I’m wanting
helping with another thing. In order to pick one aspect of the day to really focus on, to ask for God’s
insight on, I have to know what it is that I want. I have to know what is most important to me.
And finally, asking God not only requires humility, courage and focus; it also takes faith. We often
say, when we aren’t sure what the outcome of a request might be, “Well, it can’t hurt to ask.” I
disagree with this. Sometimes it hurts to ask; It hurts to need help.
I have pretty small, and not particularly strong hands, and so I’ll often go to open a jar of peanut butter
or pickles and find that I can’t do it. Now, this really is not a big deal, but for some reason, it makes
me so, so mad when I can’t open something, and so the second I realize the problem at hand, I’ll yell
to my husband, “quick, help me open this before I get furious.” He knows that I hate having to ask for
help opening things, so he is quick and discreet with his help.
The point of this story isn’t that I need to get one of those grippy things, or that I need to not let petty
frustrations get to me, though both of these may be true. The point is that it can be really hard to ask
for help. It hurts our egos to need help. It hurts to see our weaknesses and inadequacies. It hurts, at
the end of my daily examen, to say, “God, I really messed up with that one. I need you to help me be
a more loving person.” It hurts to look at myself critically. It hurts to see my failings and know that I
need intervention beyond my own effort.
And precisely because it hurts, we aren’t going to ask unless we believe that it is worth it. We aren’t
going to ask unless there’s at least some possibility that an end to our liking will come. If we were
certain that nothing would come of asking, I don’t think we would waste the breath, let alone the
emotional energy. And so by asking, whether its of our spouse or our parent or a co-worker or God,
we’re declaring our faith. We’re saying, “I don’t know what will come of it, but I, to at least some
degree, believe that I can count on you. I trust you. I have faith in you.”
We need faith to ask. We need to believe that God hears us and that God cares. We need to believe
that God is both able and willing to respond. We need to believe that some sort of end will come,
even if that end is beyond our comprehension.
Sometimes all of this feels like a tall order. It can bring me back to that place of bafflement, of
wanting to throw up my hands and turn away from the questions. And then, I remember: I don’t need
to figure all of this out right now. I don’t need to have a nuanced theology of God’s intervention or a
systematic understanding of how prayer works. All I have to do is ask, seek, and knock.
Like the poignant and complicated prayer of the man asking Jesus to come to his home to cure his
son: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” I too, can pray:
Lord, I believe. And I want to believe more. Lord, I have a little seed of faith to ask, and I want it to
blossom. I am asking you. Grant my the humility and the courage and the focus to ask. Give me the
strength to seek you and the audacity to ask of you. It is all that I can do, and all that I have to do.
Amen