TRUSTING GOD TO ANSWER

TRUSTING GOD TO ANSWER OUR PRAYERS

 

Is prayer perhaps the most practical application of faith and trust in God?   A good case can be made for this.  Where else or how else other than in prayer do we show so thoroughly that our final trust is in God and not in ourselves or anything of the visible world?  The kind of prayer about which the Gospels speak is more concerned with this trust in God than with guaranteeing us some particular good.   Jesus says that the reason we can trust to receive what we need from God is not that he, Jesus, assists our petition, but that the Father loves us.   Why wouldn't God give us the good we need?   Implicit in the teaching of Jesus on prayer is this:   God loves us and, therefore, desires what is for our good; the Father knows better than we do what is for our good.   Trusting prayer without too much insistence on a specific outcome is what we gradually learn.  Strong, absolute statements about how we need only ask the Father and God will give us that for which we ask are rooted in trusting confidence in God, a confidence eventually leading us to quit trying to tell God what we need.   God loves us, cares for us, and has done so much for us -- why not make known our needs and then simply trust God?   If that is not our practice now,  it seems at least to be the ideal for which we strive, as our prayer life deepens. 

 

(This reflection is by Fr. Don Talafous, OSB and appears in his HOMILIES FOR WEEKDAYS - YEAR 1  for the Saturday of the 6th Week of Easter.)