Prayer as Agent for Change

Homily for Thursday of the 1st Week of Lent

In speaking of today’s Gospel passage, Pope Francis noted, “That’s an almost incredible guarantee that our prayers will always be heard. He doesn’t tell us ‘Ask and you’ll get whatever you ask for.’ He instructs us to seek but he doesn’t tell us exactly what we’ll find. He tells us to knock but he doesn’t say what will be waiting for us on the other side of the opened door. But he promises us that our prayers will be heard and that God will respond.”

So many people have heard this Gospel passage as a guarantee that they will receive whatever they ask for. However, that has never been the case and was not Jesus’ intention. The great Tomas a Kempis, author of the spiritual classic “The Imitation of Christ,” wrote that the only thing we can change through prayer is ourselves. That is very clearly the result of Esther’s prayer.

Esther was one of the Babylonian exiles. King Xerxes deposed his wife Vashti because she refused to obey his orders. He then chose a new bride from among the maidens who were slaves in his household. Esther is a shy woman who passively accepts Xerxes as her husband. However, when her people are threatened by one of the counselors of Xerxes she makes the prayer we hear in the first reading. After spending a whole day in prayer asking God to rescue her people, she appears before the King and sets aside her passive ways and begs the King to save her people from destruction. Esther’s prayer was heard by God. She was able to rise to the occasion and do exactly what she was asking of God. God was able to use her once she placed herself in God’s hands.

Our Lenten journey to conversion begins with prayer. However, like Esther, we must also act in order to realize the fruit of our prayer.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator