Pope Francis: we receive God Himself when we pray courageously
October 10, 2013: In prayer we must be courageous and discover the true grace that
is given us: God Himself. That was the Pope’s message at Thursday’s morning Mass at
Casa Santa Marta.
At the heart of the homily was Jesus’ insistence, in the
day’s Gospel, that we pray with trusting insistence. The parable of the importunate
friend, the friend who obtains what he desires thanks to his insistence, gave Pope
Francis the opportunity to reflect on the quality of our prayer:
“This makes
us think, in our prayer: how do we pray? Do we pray like this, out of habit, piously
but unbothered, or do we put ourselves forward with courage before the Lord to ask
for the grace, to ask for what we’re praying for? Courage in prayer: a prayer that
is not courageous is not a real prayer. The courage to trust that the Lord listens
to us, the courage to knock on the door . . . The Lord says: ‘For everyone who asks,
receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be
opened.’ But you have to ask, seek, and knock.”
“Do we get ourselves involved
in prayer,” the Pope asked. “Do we know to knock at the heart of God?” In the Gospel
Jesus says, “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
This, the Pope said, “is a great thing”:
“When we pray courageously, the Lord
gives us the grace, but He also gives us Himself in the grace: the Holy Spirit, that
is, Himself! The Lord never gives or sends a grace by mail: never! He brings it Himself!
What we ask for is a little bit like [laughing] . . . it is the envelope that grace
is wrapped in. But the true grace is Him, Who comes to bring it to me. It’s Him. Our
prayer, if it is courageous, receives what it asks for, but also that which is more
important: the Lord.”
In the Gospel, the Pope noted, “some people receive the
grace and then go away”: of the ten lepers healed by Jesus, only once returned to
thank him. Even the blind man of Jericho found the Lord in the healing, and praised
God. But we must pray “with the courage of faith” Pope Francis insisted, prompting
us to ask even for those things that prayer does not dare hope for — that is, God
Himself:
"We ask for a grace, but we don’t dare say, 'But come Yourself to
bring it to me.' We know that a grace is always brought by Him: It is He Himself who
comes and brings it to us. Let us not embarrass ourselves by taking the grace and
not recognizing Him who brings it to us, Him who gives it to us: The Lord. That the
Lord may give us the grace of giving us Himself, always, in every grace. And that
we might recognize Him, and that we might praise Him as did the sick people in the
Gospel who were healed. So that, in that grace, we might find the Lord."