A Reflection for Thursday of the First Week of Lent
Find today’s readings here.
Jesus said to his disciples: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.
“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.” (Mt 7:7-12)
One of my father’s favorite pranks to play on his children involved an empty box of See’s Candies and a little subterfuge. Knowing that if any of his kids came into the kitchen and saw such a box left atop the fridge, they would immediately shake it to see if there was any candy inside, he would instead put in a handful of pebbles, along with a one-word note:
“Sucker!”
Our dad died in 2020, but it hasn’t stopped his children from perpetrating the joke on the next generation, and it still makes me laugh every time, pace the New Testament example. See below for my own contribution from this past Christmas. I will admit I thought of Dad and giggled a bit when I first read today’s Gospel. Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he wanted a Dark Chocolate Buttercream? Obviously Jesus was not raised by a comedian.
You can see Jesus’ point, of course—it’s the same reason the joke is funny: The confident expectation of one outcome instead results in its opposite. And just as a child trusts his or her parents to provide sustenance, so too we should trust that God will provide us what we need when we ask. The theologian William Lynch, S.J., actually identifies the beginning of each human’s understanding of irony with the first time an infant cries for its mother and she doesn’t come. Suddenly the possibility of an unexpected result enters the universe.
Jesus reminds the disciples that the reason his examples of irony sound so harsh (a snake for a fish?!) is because the fundamental element of the relationship between parent and child when it comes to meeting basic needs is trust. But if we expect and want our children to trust us, why can’t we trust God?
An important reason, of course, is one we all recognize: Sometimes life does seem to offer us a snake when we asked for a fish, a stone when we wanted bread. People suffer terribly every day, not only at the hands of others but also as the result of cruel chance. And while we are happy to praise God when we get the result we want—how many times have we heard professional athletes praise God for their victory, like maybe God swatted away the crucial goal—we can also be quick to ask, when things don’t go the way we want: Why, God? Why me? Why now?
One insight that 20th-century theologians like Jürgen Moltmann brought into greater focus—at the risk of sliding into patripassianism—was the notion that God does not ever offer to make all things well; God only says “I am with you.” The classic example is Jesus’ suffering on the cross. In addition to everything else the Passion means theologically, it also means that God is saying with us “I am literally with you in your suffering.”
Those of us following Pope Francis in these weeks of his illness and suffering might notice that he had a sense of this kinship with the suffering Christ, with a God who says “I am with you.” Remember when America’s editors interviewed the pope in 2022? Here is what he said when asked about why he seems so joyful, even amid troubles and hard times:
I am happy because I feel happy, God makes me happy. I don’t have anything to blame on the Lord, not even when bad things happen to me. Nothing. Throughout my life, he has always guided me on his path, sometimes in difficult moments, but there is always the assurance that one does not walk alone. I have that assurance. He is always at my side.
Oh, and here’s the picture. Still funny.
