NOTES for Mat 7:11-12

Christ invites us to ask the Heavenly Father for everything we need. This alone is not easy to take in. Can this really be so, and can we really trouble Him about anything at all? But even more striking is the question of whom Christ invites to ask: us, the very people whom He Himself called evil. But the Lord asks us to open up the potential for mercy that lives in us despite all our hardness precisely because He Himself loves us. And if the generosity of the Heavenly Father is set against our human limitation, then we who ask and those who ask of us turn out to be in the same position.

It would seem not hard to see oneself in another person's place, but often we do not even have enough strength for this. Meanwhile, it has long been noted that Christ formulates the well-known moral principle called the "golden rule" somewhat differently from those before Him. If many ancient sages taught that one should not do to another what one does not want for oneself, Christ proposes that we act more actively and do for our neighbor what we want for ourselves.

And this means that the Gospel proposes that we not limit ourselves to refraining from evil while sitting with folded hands. It is a call to action.