Homily for Thursday, Week 1 of Lent

Homily for Thursday
of the 1st Week of Lent

March 14, 2017

Matt 7: 7-12
Esth C: 12, 14-16, 23-25
Nativity, Washington, D.C.

“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Ask and it will be given to you’” (Matt 7: 7).

This week our gospel readings have been about prayer:  praying simply, praying the way that Jesus teaches, praying confidently.

Today, for example, Jesus reminds us that our heavenly Father loves and cares for us even more than our earthly parents and wants very much to give us good gifts.  And what is the ultimate good gift, that one thing that will be given us if we ask, if we seek it, if we knock at the Father’s door?  Life, eternal life.           

The reading from the Book of Esther foreshadows this.  Esther, queen of Persia—which really means she has 1st place in the royal harem—prays that God will guide her when she goes to the king—“the lion,” she calls him (v. 24)—to plead for the lives of her people, who are threatened with extermination by an enemy at court.

God will hear her prayer, and the Jews will be saved.  (This is the background for the Jewish feast of Purim, observed next week.)

The Feast of Esther

By Jan Lievens - Google Art Project, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41035398

We’re dealing with another enemy, one more ferocious than a Persian official and one intending deadlier consequences.  I mean, of course, the universal enemy of the human race, the foe of our eternal happiness, the one against whom Jesus warned us not to “be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more”; rather, “Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna” (Luke 12:4-5).

It’s for Satan’s defeat that the Son of God became man, and it’s for a closer union with the Son that we ask, seek, and knock.  So we prayed in the Collect, “Bestow on us, O Lord, a spirit of always pondering on what is right and of hastening to carry it out.”  So we come to the Holy Eucharist, seeking a closer union with God’s Son, a bond that strengthens us for knowing and carrying out God’s will, as Jesus did, a bond that promises us eternal life with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.