Our Lady of Carter Lake Catholic Church at 3501 N. 9th Street, Carter Lake, IA 51510 US - Ask, Seek and Knock

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13 In Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, a Knight returns from the Crusades and passes through a country plagued with the Black Death. The Knight is trying to catch up with God before Death catches up with him. To stall for time as he searches, the Knight challenges Death to a game of chess. As they play, the Knight says: “I want knowledge, not faith . . . I want God to stretch out his hand towards me, reveal himself and speak to me . . .Why should he hide himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen parables? I call out to him in the dark but no one seems to be there.” Death responds, “Perhaps no one is there.” But the Knight remains undaunted in his search for God and meaning. He finds it in the simple and beautiful love between a young married couple and their child whose company he enjoys for a while. Before death finally takes him, the Knight finds fulfillment for himself by delaying Death one more time to allow the family to escape safely. In today’s first reading, Abraham bargains with God. Although Sodom is doomed by God for its grave sins, Abraham petitions him to spare the city if there are as few as ten just people there. He is persistent in prayer -- although in the end, Sodom was found not to have even ten righteous people, and was destroyed. In the gospel, Jesus teaches a parable about persistence in prayer and then adds these words of emphasis: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” If Jesus were to appear before us today, he might add: “Ask, seek and knock the way the Knight did in Bergman’s film or the way Abraham did in Genesis.” Jesus’ words sound nice, but they don’t square off with real life. All prayers are not answered! Good people ask for cures and don’t receive them, seek justice and don’t find it and knock for jobs and don’t get them. Jesus is trying to make only one point with this parable __ be persistent in prayer. He even provides us reasons for this: we have a loving father who cares for us, listens to us and rejoices to give us what we truly need. But Jesus also leaves a lot unsaid. He doesn’t say that all our ills will be healed, or that all our problems disappear. After all, we are still on earth and not heaven. But Jesus does assure us that we cannot ask, seek or knock in vain. In our troubles, pains and sorrows, we will receive the Holy Spirit to support us, strengthen us and inspire us. In his book Our Prayer, Louis Evely suggests that we can find meaning in every circumstance of our lives, even in tragedies. God does not cause bad things to happen to us, but does show us how to overcome them. God does not prevent disasters or death; he is with us in them. He offers us the grace to be happier poor than we would have been rich; to be happier in misfortune than when everything is going well. So we need to be persistent in prayer --not so much to persuade God about what we want -- but to prepare ourselves to receive what we really need. We might want prosperity, success or health. But what we might really need is patience, wisdom and peace. Ask for these things, and we will receive them. Seek after these higher gifts, and we will find them. Knock in faith for things that are of real value, and in fact they will be given to us.

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