Day 9, Thursday, 25 February Giving a snake when you are asked for a fish

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 9, Thursday, 25 February

Giving a snake when you are asked for a fish

We had a revered man once who was a guide for younger Jesuits and I remember him quoting this saying of Jesus (Matthew 7:7-12) with an emphatic guffaw: ‘is there one among you who would give his son a snake when he asked for a fish?’ and he laughed heartily.  It was a clinching argument that God answers our prayers. It was impossible that he would not do so. Today’s first reading (Esther 4:17) is the story of how Esther finds herself the queen and has the dangerous task of pleading for her (Jewish) people. Fearfully, she prays that God will turn the heart of the king and save her people.

The persuasion of scripture is one thing. The actual experience of our lives is another. Are we really able to trust God when problems pile up; family issues, money issues, work issues? Is it a matter of sitting back and asking God to solve the issue? ‘You do it. I can’t cope’. No, it can’t be that. It is an attitude we develop. Ignatius of Loyola is said to have written to someone. ‘Work as if everything depends on you, and trust is if everything depends on God.’ Whether these are his actual words or not the saying does fit with his teaching.

God can only work in our lives if we do all that we can on our side. This is the meaning of the Incarnation. It is a meeting of the divine with the human. If we strive to do the best we can, we will find we make room for God to come and complete our efforts. If we sit on our hands and do nothing, we block the divine life flowing into our lives.

Why is it so difficult to trust? To trust others? To trust God? To trust ourselves?

Ruth Burrows puts it this way:

If I were to say that what I want to show people is what really matters is utter trust in God; that this trust cannot be there until we have lost all self-trust and are rooted in poverty; that we must be willing to go to God with empty hands, and that the whole meaning of our existence and the one consuming desire of the heart of God is that we should let ourselves be loved, many spiritual persons would smile at my naïveté.

Is there a contradiction between ‘trusting ourselves’ and ‘losing all self-trust’? It seems so. But on further reflection is not the real sign of our trusting ourselves that we are able to go beyond ourselves to trust another?