‘Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.’ ”
~Matthew 7:7-12
What a splendid Gospel passage from Thursday’s liturgy. It seems, at first glance, so simple. Yet it can be very difficult to ask God for the strength or insight we need in order to recognize His enduring love for us, even in the most difficult times.
Jesus stresses again here that God is our Father. The truth of the relationship between parents and children is a symbol of the profound love that He has for each one of us.
Still, we find it hard to ask God to take over our lives. We don’t “trust Him” with our vulnerability and our needs (above all, our need for Him). How do we know that the Infinite Mystery that gives us existence really has particular concern for His creatures? Life seems so appallingly strange, and it can be hard to see the workings of Divine Love in so many circumstances. Love is mysterious in its ways, and we are sometimes tempted to be discouraged. How often it feels as if God’s love has passed us by in silence.
Often we lack trust in God because we feel like we are alone, facing a reality that overwhelms us.
In fact, what enables us to remember God’s steadfast love, His fidelity to His promises, His inexhaustible goodness… is Jesus. We need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, lived in communion with His (and our) brothers and sisters. Jesus is God dwelling with us; He is the answer to all the longings of our hearts and the medicine that heals all our wounds.
We are never “alone.”
Never give up asking, seeking, knocking. Even (especially) when catastrophe seems suddenly to fall upon our lives, when we are afflicted by irreplaceable losses. God is faithful. Let us ask, seek, and knock unceasingly, from the depths of our agony and incomprehension. In these times, we experience our own poverty. And we know that “the Lord hears the cry of the poor.”
