Our heavenly father—and our earthly parents

A Reflection for Thursday of the First Week of Lent

Find today’s readings here.

The first lines of today’s Gospel are well known to most of us: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” I find that they come to mind most often when I am praying in some situation where I fear that what I need will not be given to me, some scenario where it seems to me most likely that the door will stay closed.

Realizing that, it is helpful to situate today’s reading within its setting at the Sermon on the Mount. Even more, it’s helpful to recognize that when Jesus refers to how the Father will give good things to those who ask him, he is echoing a theme that recurs through the Sermon, across two full chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. If you think back over the last few weeks, when the Sunday Gospels before Lent were progressing through the Sermon the Mount, you may recall some of them, and then again when we heard it on Ash Wednesday.

Jesus tells his disciples that they are the salt of the earth and light of the world, in order that others “may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” He gives the command to love enemies, “so that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,” and confirms it with the call to “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

In the Gospel we heard on Ash Wednesday, Jesus’ counsel is to keep our prayer, fasting and almsgiving secret so that “your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” On Tuesday of this week, he taught us to pray, calling God “our Father” who will forgive us as we forgive others.

But today Jesus links our knowledge of the heavenly Father to earthly parents, reminding us that if even we, “who are wicked,” know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more so must God?

And suddenly the asking and seeking and knocking is not our approach to God who is remote and beyond our reach, but counsel to be childlike in trust, reaching out to God who is already trying to care for us with a parent’s tender and solicitous love.

For me, this experience is with nephews and godchildren and the children of beloved friends; I can only imagine how much more intense it is for parents. But I know something of what it is like to try to give something good and necessary to a child who cannot see it for what it is, whether in a moment of anger or frustration or hurt. And I know what it is as a child to have mistaken a parent’s love and concern for interference or judgment.

When we come through those moments of conflict into clarity, relationships between parents and children snap back into focus, and tension is replaced with trust as we realize who we are to each other, seeking what is good and seeking to give what is good.

So perhaps we can hear Jesus’ counsel to ask and seek and knock today offering us that invitation: Realize who you are and who your Father is, and trust in his abiding and generous care.

• Facebook
• X
• Mail