Thursday of the First Week of Lent
“… help me, who am alone and have no one but you, O Lord.”
Prayer of petition rests on a consoling truth: God knows us. This is our belief in God and our understanding of who God is.
Jesus tells us today: “Ask and it will be given to you.” If God knows us why do we need to ask? (St. Benedict quotes the prophet: “’Before you call I will say, here I am!’”)
We need to ask because we need to understand ourselves; we need to know our neediness, our true condition, our true poverty, and our need for God!
Yet there is more. Self-knowledge is not only complicated but, left to ourselves, fraught with mistaken paths.
In Genesis, the Holy Spirit breathes over chaos to bring out of it, order, light, beauty, knowledge, and wisdom. The human spirit is chaotic without this Spirit. Jeremiah says: ‘More tortuous than all else is the human heart!’ So, God waits upon our willingness to allow this journey of self-knowledge to take place but always, in His presence. It is a journey into our knowing in God. St. John Henry Newman put it:
(My God), In Thee alone have I that which can stay me up for ever: Thou alone are the food of my soul, something new to know, something new to love… At the end of millions of years, I shall find in Thee, the same, or rather, greater sweetness than at first, and shall seem then only to be beginning to enjoy Thee; and so on for eternity I shall ever be a little child beginning to be taught the rudiments of thy infinite Divine Nature.”
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Daily Reflections, Lenten Resources