THE KEY TO EFFECTIVE PRAYER

HOMILY OF THURSDAY 25TH FEBRUARY, 2021
WEEKEND OF LENT (1)

R1:- Esther14:1.3-4.11.13.14
PS:- 138:1.2a.2bcd-3.7d-8
Accl:- Psalm 51:10a-12
Gosp:- Matthew 7:7-12

THEME: THE KEY TO EFFECTIVE PRAYER.

Jesus invitation to ask, knock and seek in our today’s gospel, must be greeted with wisdom. Asking aright is a key, knocking the right door is pertinent , and seeking in the right place is necessary.

The rule of prayer still remains the rule of  faith. It will be a waste of time asking God for what he has already given to us. Wisdom invites us to seek to know exactly what we need.

There are time when we only need to know what the Lord has done for us so as to claim them in words and acts of thanksgiving. There are times when we simply need to ascertain what God demands from us in a particular situation. Our part in an issue may be the key to the solution to our problems. Seeking is also a kind of inquiry, knowing the why and how of things.

However, if your is car is bad, God can make it work miraculously, but wisdom entails you seek to know exactly what the fault is. Proper diagnosis is a prayer answered. There are many people today, who have died of common and treatable sicknesses, simply because of wrong diagnosis. When we seek solution in the wrong places, we will run the risk of calamities.

Though God can change the course of nature to our good, in order to show our feeble minds that he is Lord of all, he cannot say that the law of gravitational force is a lie. He is the one who made the nature and the natural laws.

Moreover, the heavens belong to God and the earth he has given to man. Psalm 115:16. We must seek to know the right buttons to press in the quest to solve our problems.

In our today’s first reading, Esther’s prayer point was to gain an eloquent speech so as to win the heart of the king. She did not ask God to turn the heart of the king around without her playing a role. She wanted God to give her what it takes to convince the king. She knew that she needed to play a role in the enterprise. It was not an issue of mere abracadabra.

Hence, let us seek to know the principles that governs the ordering of things, so that we may walk our way freely into the presence of the king of kings and get the right solution to whatever is menacing us.

May God grant us the wisdom needed to make our prayers answered. May we gain the wisdom of those who ask aright, that we knock the right door and find exactly the answer to all our questions. Amen.