NOTES for Luk 11:5-13

Continuing His teaching on prayer, the Lord speaks the familiar words: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” These words describe an approach to prayer, and indeed to all communion with God, characterized first of all by humility. The Lord does not say, “Demand what you are entitled to,” or “Take possession of whatever comes your way,” or “Enter (this world and the Father's Kingdom) as masters of your own vast homeland...” A request allows for refusal, a search for not finding, a knock at the door for the possibility that no one will open it. Yet Christ calls us to do all these things, trusting His promise. This trust is the second characteristic of a Christian's prayer. Third, such prayer rests on an expressed desire to find, receive, and enter. This striving toward God, to whom we pray, is also necessary for Christian prayer. Without it, nothing will come of our prayer.

In the final verse of today's brief Gospel passage, Christ says something supremely important about the good we should ask for and receive from the Father: “If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.” Not plentiful food, not emotional comfort, not even long—or eternal—years of life: the Holy Spirit. This is the true good God wants to give us: Himself. And it is this one true good alone that is worth seeking.

Like an epigraph to this Gospel passage, words from the deuterocanonical book of the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach come to mind: “...and you will be like a son of the Most High, and He will love you more than your mother does” (Sir. 4:10). Today, when the Lord speaks to us of His love for every person—a love so difficult to understand and feel that He has to turn to an analogy, the analogy of a person's love for their child—we understand something. The words “if even you, being evil” contain an important indication that the Lord loves us more than our parents do. The Lord probably did not want to offend anyone by calling them evil, but it mattered to Him to say precisely what the author of the Wisdom of Sirach expresses so vividly. More than your mother does... This is a striking and powerful image, because perhaps there is no stronger love on earth than a mother's love for her child. And a child's love for their mother... Today's reading and the words of Sirach take us beyond earthly horizons, where our feelings must fall silent: as instruments of this earthly life, they can no longer tell us anything. So if these words about a mother hurt someone, that is the most fitting and natural—even, one might say, healthy—reaction of our earthly feelings. It is worse if these words are accepted immediately and easily: that means something is wrong in our lives.

The apostle Paul tells us: now these three remain: faith, hope, and love (1 Cor 13:13), and through his word faith, hope, and love became the most important Christian virtues. People speak often and at length about what faith and love are. But what is hope? "Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men" (Ps 145:3), we sing at every liturgy. This is a kind of apophatic definition of hope. Our hope cannot dwell in the world of passing human relationships. This is sometimes hard to understand and accept, because we are used to hoping in one another; that, it would seem, is our brotherhood. But something else is meant here. Each of us is weak and sinful, and for that reason alone cannot always give another person what he asks for.

But we have another kind of hope, the holy promise that the Lord will always give us what we ask of him. Only one thing is needed: that we have faith, hope, and love. Faith, so that we direct our gaze toward God; hope, so that we have the strength to wait, knock, and seek; love, so that we give the fruits of God's kindness to others. But reasoning this way, one gradually comes to the thought that the division between these three virtues is to a certain extent conditional. Faith is akin to hope, for it is just as strong; hope is akin to love, for it is just as radiant. One without the other is meaningless. And perhaps even corrupt. Think what today's passage about hoping that God will answer would mean if there were no faith and no love. Then we could be called consumers of divine grace, and nothing more.

What do we usually ask God for? Well, of course, health... What else? Good weather, money, protection in danger... And do we always receive it? And if not always, why not? Are we asking for the right thing?

After all, it is said: "seek first the Kingdom of God..." The Kingdom of God is when God reigns in us, when we strive to fulfill His will, not because otherwise we will be punished, but by consent, out of love, because He is the Father. But only by receiving the Holy Spirit do we receive the spirit of adoption, which makes our relationship with the Father real. "All the rest will be added to you"; so the Father gives the most important thing: the Holy Spirit.

Why, if God loves us so much and so wants to show us His love, must we ask Him, knock, and seek? He Himself commands us to ask, and He also says that He already knows what we need; for greater persuasion He even gives parables.

The answer to this strange feature of God's character is hidden in this short verse. God does not give merely bread, or money, or spiritual benefits. He gives the Holy Spirit. And this encounter with the Spirit can only be voluntary. The Spirit is given only to those who want this with all their heart, and such a desire cannot help being expressed in prayer.

What can God give a person? A strange question, it would seem: obviously, everything He wants to give. But what does a person really need from God? No less obvious: what he can never, nowhere, in any way, and from no one else receive. As for earthly goods, a person receives them in an earthly way, from this world and in accordance with its laws.

Of course, God can help a person in this and often does, showing him where he can find what he needs and how to obtain it, but in the fallen world such things are often acquired without direct divine participation. The Holy Spirit, that breath of God with which the Kingdom is permeated and which is present in the world, can be received only from God. It would seem that if God's breath is poured throughout creation, why can it be received only from Him?

But the point is that it opens itself to a person only in the context of his relationship with God and in connection with it. God's breath does not exist by itself, apart from the Divine Person in all the fullness of His existence, and one can experience its reality only when firm and conscious relationships have been established with this Person.

In fact, without such relationships no spiritual life is possible at all, and life in general will be rather poor without them. Indeed, from the very beginning God conceived man as one who should be in a state of continual communion with Him; it is precisely God's "breath of life" that makes man human. And breath, meanwhile, implies a continuous process; one cannot manage with a single inhale and exhale.

But man is free, and in the fallen state he often used his freedom to ignore God's presence in his life, including His breath. Yet this did not lessen God's love for man, and He is always ready to meet the one who returns to Him. And then, after conversion, after a person's relationship with God again becomes firm and conscious, he will receive what he will never receive anywhere, from anyone, in this world: God's breath in all the fullness accessible to man. And life too, in all accessible fullness.

The disciples' request to the Saviour concerning prayer may at first seem strange. Who, after all, in the deeply religious Jewish society of that time did not know how to pray? Parents taught their children traditional prayers from childhood, just as every Jewish boy was introduced from childhood to the practice of reading the Torah at home. In this sense, there simply could not have been people in the Jewish society of that time who did not know how to pray. But something else is at issue here. In the Gospel era, very different practices of prayer existed within Jewish religious life.

Continuous inward prayer was fairly widespread, especially among the Pharisees. Some even sought to emphasise their exceptional devotion to prayer: they walked into people and trees, as though noticing nothing and no one, or stopped suddenly in the middle of the street, presenting themselves as absorbed in prayerful contemplation. And there were many ways of praying.

Different teachers proposed their own approaches, so the disciples' question to Jesus was entirely understandable. There are many practices of prayer. Which one would you recommend to us? Yet Jesus offers the apostles nothing particularly complicated. The prayer he proposes is short; it contains only the principal requests, those essential to the spiritual life of a Christian seeking the Kingdom. No verbosity, nothing superfluous. No long prayers, no special techniques.

This is understandable: what is at issue is communion with God. Not entering some special state of altered consciousness, not having this or that experience, but meeting God. Bringing two wills into contact: God's and the human will. Then the Encounter will take place. After that, all that remains is to maintain the contact that has been established. Not to lose sight of God.

What matters most in prayer is the continuity of one's inward presence before God. The steadfastness of the will and of the intentions one directs towards him. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of unceasing, persistent requests. The point is not to wear God down, but to make contact with him constant, so that God can interact with a person continuously, not merely from time to time. Otherwise the life of the Kingdom is impossible: it is possible only as this unbroken communion with God. All practices of prayer and spiritual life exist solely for the sake of such unbroken communion. They are only a means. The goal is life with God. In all its fullness.

Today's reading includes two episodes joined by the evangelist into one account. It begins with the disciples' question about prayer, in response to which Jesus offers them, and through them all of us, the "Our Father" (vv. 1-4). Luke, as one can see, focuses chiefly on the importance of asking, and of asking persistently, as a necessary condition for receiving what is asked (vv. 5-13). It would seem that God is not a human being who needs, like a forgetful or unfriendly steward, to be reminded again and again of what is requested. On the other hand, persistence in this case turns out above all to be evidence that a person remembers his request and that it is truly important to him. Indeed, is it worth granting a request that the one who asks forgets the very next day? One can ask this way only for trifles; important requests are those that a person who truly cares about them is ready to repeat again and again, confirming the seriousness of his intentions.

The same seriousness is at issue in the second part of today's passage. The point is not only that the very idea of casting out demons by the power of their ruler was absurd (vv. 17-18, 21-22). The point is also that for those arguing, everything Jesus did was a kind of game, something remotely resembling their own disputes, which were undoubtedly fascinating but, in essence, demanded no commitment. This explains the demand for a sign that would prove Jesus right (vv. 14-16).

The proof had to be theologically correct; it had to correspond to the "right" ideas of the "right" rabbinic school in order to be accepted. And until such proof was presented, anything would do as an explanation of what was happening, including absurd claims about the "prince of demons." But Jesus Himself was not going to play these games, because for Him everything He did was absolutely serious. And He tries to explain to His listeners the full seriousness of what is happening (vv. 24-26). The games are over; what is at stake is a person's spiritual life and spiritual death.

But professional disputants, as one can see, have no concern for that. What matters to them is whether Jesus will manage to outargue them or not. And in their disputes they lose the Kingdom without noticing it. For the Kingdom is not a game; it is serious. And forever.

It would probably not be wrong to say that the central message of Christ's preaching is the message of the Father. In many other parables, the Lord portrays God in a way close to Jewish ideas and perhaps sometimes necessary for us: as a King who has absolute power over His subjects. But in today's parables He appears only as a father who loves his children whatever they may be like, or as a friend ready to help even at the most inconvenient moment.

Jesus' listeners know from their own experience that, however gloomy and unkind a person may be, he is still capable of showing tenderness and care towards what is dearest to him—his children. They also know that people are able to help one another in need even when it is unpleasant for them. Now, Jesus says, understand one simple thing: God is better than you, kinder and more generous—can He really be a worse Father to you than you are to your children? In this light, the prayer “Our Father” becomes not simply one possible form of addressing God but an astonishing revelation of the mystery of the Father's love, stronger and more tender than anything else in the world.

There is something common to today’s readings from Genesis and the Gospel of Luke. Abraham speaks with his guest (guests?), while understanding that he is speaking with God. This transforms the entire conversation into prayer. Does this prayer achieve its purpose? If the purpose was to intercede for Sodom and Gomorrah, then no! But if its purpose was to deepen the relationship with God, to discern His will and to penetrate the depths of His mercy, then yes, that purpose is achieved! The entire passage from Luke’s Gospel concerns the same thing. What should our prayer be like, and what is its purpose? Jesus’ answer is the prayer “Our Father” and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.

The disciples' question to Jesus about prayer was quite traditional in Gospel times. In that age, learned rabbis and teachers of the Torah generally devoted much attention to prayer and prescribed prayer rules: their length, form, and content. Proper prayer was considered the foundation of a person's entire relationship with God; words were given an almost independent significance within that relationship. It did not, of course, amount to outright magic, but there was more than enough formalism in the prescriptions governing prayer. Jesus, meanwhile, offers His disciples a short prayer of extraordinary spiritual depth.

Every word, every petition here is filled with profound meaning. Over two thousand years of Christian history, so much has been written about each that a whole human lifetime would probably not suffice to study these commentaries on the Lord's Prayer alone. But it is not, of course, merely a matter of what we would now call the theological richness of the short prayer Jesus offers His disciples. Above all, it is a matter of prayer's spiritual quality. It is no accident that the Savior gives the example of someone asking a friend for help: God is precisely a friend to us, and a friend who realizes that the matter is serious will not refuse to help.

For the friend to realize this, however, the request must be persistent and unrelenting. Someone who turns to God without fully believing that they will receive what they ask for will most likely receive nothing. Not because God hears such a person less well than a persistent one, but because persistence here is nothing other than an expression of the depth and intensity of the relationship binding the petitioner to God, and of the depth of their trust in Him. Without these, there can be no relationship with God, and turning to Him is futile.