REFLECTIONS
REFLECTIONS ON LK 11:5-12
October 08, 2020
When we were young, we are taught to pray to God for protection (Angel of God), for what we need (Our Father), for praising and thanking God for His blessings as in the Grace before and after meals. Many times, we bombarded God asking what we want, that of our families, relatives, and our friends. We see God as a GREAT PROVIDER. But as we grow older, our image of God changes. As we pray in whatever circumstances we are in, we learn by experience that in God’s wisdom not all we ask in prayer is granted or given to us.
In Luke of today’s gospel, the imagery described by Jesus drawn from the reality of Jewish culture in a traditional village where it is normal for a neighbor to ask a friend anytime for loaves of bread to offer his unexpected visitor, is His way of teaching the disciples not only of PERSISTENCE and CONSTANCY IN PRAYER but more so of revealing the NATURE of GOD the FATHER as Jesus said” 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?” Jesus discloses the Father, who bestows and sustains us, His creatures, with His gifts and blessings as He prepared everything before He created man in the Book of Genesis.
In the last phrase, there was a twist “… give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Here, Jesus emphasized what we need to ask and elevated the quality of prayer that we have to make. ASK FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT, Why? The Holy Spirit is the GOOD GIFT from the Father for the Holy Spirit knows what we need and helps us to pray when we don’t know what to pray. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.…” (Romans 8:26-27). The Spirit of God in us communes with God the Father and acts on us through Jesus, His Son.
