Thursday of the First Week of Lent

Today's Mass Readings

Queen Esther’s prayer is desperate. She lays flat on the ground with her face in the dust and shakes with anguish from morning to night. It might sound extreme, but I would imagine most of us who have lived long enough and been persons of faith, have had these times when we felt like our backs are against the wall and all the exits appear blocked.

As we grow and mature, and certainly for Americans I think it is doubly worse, that we think we are self-reliant. It is true that no one else lives your life. Regardless, growth in spiritual maturity is proportionate to progress in abandonment to divine Providence. And for most of us, the maturing does not happen except by suffering.

We do not have to seek out suffering of course, nor does turning over to God have to be drudgery. Jesus says: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” It is simple and childlike. I can tell you I encounter so many people who find giving up control or asking for help as hard to do as forgiving an enemy.

There is a certain “spiritual physics” at work in this world, as Bishop Robert Barron terms it. In the case of prayer, we can’t receive what we did not ask for, find what we did not seek, or have a door opened when we did not freely knock. God does not wish to impose Himself, and indeed, longs for His children to approach Him with great confidence.

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB