Daily Reflection for Thursday, March 10, 2022
Peace and Blessings, Friends and Parishioners,
We encourage you to reflect on Thursday’s readings at this link:
Thursday of the First Week in Lent | USCCB
If you prefer to use your own Bible, the readings are:
First Reading: C:12, 14-16, 23-25
Responsorial: Psalm 138:1-3, 7c-8
Gospel: Matthew 7:7-12
Our reflection on Thursday’s readings:
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7
My niece has had significant health related concerns since before her birth. My sister and my brother-in-law have consequently experienced the distress of uncertainty as well as vacillating levels of health-related stressors for years. With an inadequate understanding for their experience without a parallel one of my own, I have been peripherally aware of their struggles and have a general sense for their evolution over the years including their prayers both for my niece as well as their family. Prayers for healing have not ceased though these prayers have given greater way to those focused on acceptance. Prayers for wisdom in the face of medical decisions haven’t changed and yet they’ve been modified to include both the health professionals and the grace to weather individual and family implications of chronic illness.
A Lenten reflection by Bishop Robert Barron submits that this Gospel reading invites persistence (even stubbornness) as it relates to prayer and seeking answer to prayer. This fact invites me to consider my response to unanswered prayer. If I don’t get what I’m requesting, how might this stretch me? Does it spark a yearning and an ever-stronger desire to continue to pray for my intention? Does it force me to have to manage confusion and the isolation that a seemingly unanswered prayer can foster? Does it produce frustration or demoralization? Does it prompt me to modify my ask? Does it modify what I seek and how I seek it? Does it invite consideration to identify what door has been opened and how an answer to prayer might be revealed even if it deviates from what I expected to see when it was opened?
How have you responded to the idea of unanswered prayer?
May we continue to be led this Lent by a desire to further cement our relationship with our Lord. May this come both in the form of resolution of prayer intentions as well as the growth, insight and Divine input needed to re-shape the perspective of those lifting them up.
Rafael Rosario