Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
October 6, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/100622.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our Gospel gives us three comforting invitations and assurances:

Ask, knock, seek. 
If you do, you shall
receive, be welcomed, find.

That’s nice, isn’t it? But does it really work? I’ve asked for a lot of things I haven’t received. I’ve knocked and sought answers that never came to me. What about you?

Perhaps we’ve been reading the passage with a closed heart.  This Gospel may be more remarkable for what it does NOT say than for what it says.

It says ask, not ask FOR something.
It says knock, not BURST IN.
It says seek, not seek AFTER something.

The reading is not about getting our particular requests presented before, heard and answered by God. It is not about how to visit a “Santa Claus” God with our wish list and get everything we asked for.

• It is, instead, about recognizing our emptiness, and asking God to fill it – in whatever way God wishes.
• It is about recognizing that the Spirit lives in a deeper place in our lives – a place that is opened to us only by prayer and trust.
• It is about seeking God and God’s desire for us, far beyond any tangible gift.

When we’ve done this kind of asking, knocking and seeking, we have no “answered prayers” to show for it. Instead, we are changed in the way rivers are changed by the rush of melting mountain snows. We are fed, the way trees are fed by the rain disappearing at their roots. We are at peace, the way the deep ocean lies in peace despite any surface storm.

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Poetry: from Rumi

One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.
A voice asked: “Who is there?” He answered: “It is I.”
The voice said: “There is no room here for me and thee.”
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation
this man returned to the door of the Beloved.
He knocked.
A voice from within asked: “Who is there?”
The man said: “It is Thou.”
The door was opened for him.

Music: A delightful song from the 60s that will charm you and stick in your head all day. 

And the Love Come Trickling Down ~ The Womenfolk