Suy Niệm Tin Mừng Thứ Năm Tuần 27 Thường Niên

 Suy Niệm Tin Mừng Thứ Năm Tuần 27 Thường Niên

Qua bài Tin Mừng hôm nay, Chúa đã nhấn mạnh cho chúng ta thấy sức mạnh của lời cầu nguyện và sự cần thiết trong việc phải kiên trì trong sự cầu nguyện. Khi chúng ta cảm thấy rằng Thiên Chúa không nghe hoặc không đáp lại những lời cầu xin của chúng tai, có lẽ chúng ta phải nhớ rằng cách của Thiên Chúa làm việc không phải là cách làm việc của con người chúng ta và có lẽ Thiên Chúa đã có kế hoạch khác cho chúng ta, và có khi kế hoạch đó còn tốt hơn là những gì chúng ta đã xin.

Khi Chúa dạy các môn đệ cầu nguyện, Ngài cũng nhắc nhở chúng ta qua Tin Mừng là hãy nhớ cầu nguyện luôn. Chính vì trong khi cầu nguyện, chúng ta đã mở lòng với Thiên Chúa. Chính vì trong lời cầu nguyện mà chúng ta đã xác tín được sự tin tưởng của chúng ta ở nơi Thiên Chúa. Và chính vì trong lời cầu nguyện mà chúng ta xác tín được sự chân thành và thẳng thắn của chúng ta với Thiên Chúa.

Reflection:

Today's Gospel strongly emphasizes the power of prayer and the need to be persistent in prayer. When we feel that God is not listening or answering our prayers, perhaps we must remember that God's way is not man's way and perhaps the Lord has other plans for us. As the Lord taught his disciples to pray, he also reminds us through the Gospel to remember to pray. It is in prayer that we open ourselves to him. It is in prayer that we confirm our trust in him. It is in prayer that we confirm our sincerity and frankness with him.

Thursday 27th Ordinary Time

Opening Prayer: I come to you today, Lord, believing firmly that you care about me and are interested in my life. I take comfort in the words from today’s first reading: “the Lord listened attentively.” I know you are listening to me, right now. You are loving me and smiling upon me, because, as you remind me in today’s first reading, I am “yours, your own special possession.” Teach me, Lord, to hear your voice and follow wherever you lead.

Encountering Christ:

Expectations: What do I expect from God? Jesus makes it abundantly clear that we should expect from God much more than we can possibly imagine: “How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” A merely human father knows how to give good gifts to his children. Our heavenly Father is infinitely more loving, attentive, wise, and powerful. He is infinitely more committed to us, to our welfare. Even the best of human fathers is only finite in his capacity to love and provide. God is all-loving, all-powerful, all-present. What a difference it would make if we believed with all our heart and soul in this truth that Jesus has revealed so energetically! When we look at the lives of the saints, we see an unbridled faith in God’s infinite goodness and commitment to us. That faith frees them from the shackles of earthly fears and insecurities. It unleashes the gifts of the Holy Spirit so that they experience more and more fully the divine goodness they believe in and spread that goodness around them. We all believe in this infinite goodness and loving interest of God. But we can believe in it more fully, more radically. Faith, like all Christian virtues, is a gift and a task. We have received the gift; now we need to exercise it more consciously, intentionally, and regularly so that it can grow and bear the fruit God wants it to.

Ask, Seek, Knock: Whenever the Jewish rabbis repeated one concept three times with three different words, it was a sign of extreme emphasis. That is what Jesus did in this case. He used two parables–the sleeping friend and the fish/egg vs. snake/scorpion–to illustrate how we must entrust ourselves and our needs to God, and so enter a true childlike relationship with him. And then he exhorted us to be very demanding with God by asking, seeking, knocking. Jesus knows that our hearts burn with deep and passionate desires–for meaning, for happiness, for peace, for wisdom, for counsel, for love, for blessings–our hearts are furnaces of desires! And they are thus because God has made them thus. Ours is not a religion that promises peace only by extinguishing desires. On the contrary, Jesus invites us to feed our good desires by expressing them insistently to the One who can fulfill them. Life itself, with all the yearnings it gives us, is God at work within us. Every good desire we experience is like a promise from the Lord—he wouldn’t give us hearts that yearn so much if he wasn’t able to satisfy beyond all expectations the yearnings we experience. As the Catechism puts it (1718): “This desire [for happiness] is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it.”

The Cynical Seduction: We have all prayed to God for so many things. We have asked him for so many graces and favors; we have sought and knocked so often, just like the importunate friend in the parable. But it seems that more often than not our petitions are ignored. Doesn’t it? Be honest. So many problems, so much suffering, so many difficulties and failures, sins and sorrows—if God really is the Good Father who wants to give us more than we even know how to ask for, why is life such an unending flow of tears and tribulations? If only we remember one thing, we will never get stuck in cynicism and discouragement. If only we remember what Jesus told Pilate just hours before he sacrificed his own life to redeem us from sin, we will learn to obey St. Paul’s bold injunction to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always! I shall say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). Jesus told Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). The fulfillment he yearns to give us is much deeper than we realize, although he sometimes allows us to glimpse it even in earthly terms, as he did when answering the prayers of all Christendom in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto (commemorated by today’s memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary). And so, when he doesn’t answer our askings, seekings, and knockings the way we expected, we can be sure that it’s only because what he has in mind is better than what we had in mind. And with that assurance, our hearts will never be seduced by the siren calls of soul-squelching cynicism.

Conversing with Christ: I will never give up on you, Lord. Just as I know you will never give up on me. I know that for you “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). I renew my commitment to follow and obey you every single day of my life, no matter what. I will never stop asking, seeking, and knocking for the fulfillment of the longings you have placed with me. And I will never stop renewing my faith in your infinite goodness and in your personal commitment to my holiness and everlasting happiness. Thank you, my Lord! May your name be ever blessed!

Resolution: Lord, today by your grace I will compose my own “act of faith,” my very own prayer, written in my own words, that I will pray every day for the next week in order to exercise and thereby increase my faith in your omnipotent goodness.

Thur - 27th Week in Ordinary Time

In today's Gospel, Jesus strongly emphasizes the power of prayer and the need to be persistent in prayer. When we feel that God is not listening to us or not answering to our prayers, perhaps we must remember that God's way is not our way and perhaps God always has other and better plans for us. We need to pray persistently; asking God to answer our prayers. The three words “Ask, Seek, Knock”' are in the present continuous tense. When Jesus say to us, to Ask, to Seek, to Knock; He is saying: “Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Don’t give up!” Just as the man went to his friend, in the middle of the night, to ask for bread for his guest;

Jesus says, “'persistence will be enough to make him (friend) get up and give his friend (the man) all he wants.” Why have such faith in God, when we Ask, when we Seek, and when we Knock? Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; Seek, and you will find; Knock, and the door will be opened to you.”

As human parents, in their love for their children, give what is good for them, And “How much more” will the heavenly Father give to us. God will not just give us what we ask, that is good for us, God will give us the best gift ever the Holy Spirit. As the Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he also reminds us to remember to pray patiently and pray persistently. It is in prayer that we open ourselves to God. It is in prayer that we confirm our trust in God. It is in prayer that we confirm our sincerity and frankness with God.

Reflection:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you." This is a very often-quoted verse, and its appeal is not so surprising. Imagine, a God who gives you anything you want as long as you keep asking. Or so we, with our often misguided desires, would like to believe. But going back to the verse, Jesus did not initially say what it was. Did he really mean that God will grant us anything we ask of Him? Knowing Christ in His wisdom, it's highly unlikely that he meant it that way. As we read on, it becomes a little more evident what He did suggest.

At the end of the gospel passage, Jesus said, "Even you evil people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more then will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" Here, He sets the parameters to what God will willingly and lovingly grant us: the Holy Spirit. We might ask for things that we believe we want or need, but these might not reflect our deepest desires, and will probably do us more harm than good. Sometimes, what we seek becomes muddled by the superficial priorities of the world, that we forget about what it is we truly seek. When we stop for a while to step back and get a glimpse of the deepest recesses of our hearts, there lies our true desire to know and love God with our whole being. But it is only in asking Him and seeking His infinite wisdom that we may receive this blessing.