Comparing the ways the different gospel writers tell the story of Jesus teaches you not only something about Jesus but also about how the Church remembered the story and about how the gospel writer thought about it. For example, both St. Matthew and St. Luke report a saying of Jesus about prayer but with one subtle difference. Both report Jesus stressed the importance of asking, seeking, knocking because God is eager to hear, and to respond to, our prayers. The passage concludes in St. Matthew with Jesus saying that if we know how to respond to our own children “how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.” St. Luke concludes the passage by saying that the heavenly Father will give “the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” The “good thing” in Matthew’s account is, in fact, the Holy Spirit for Luke. What the evangelist wants us to understand is that what we are asking for might not be what we truly need and when God opens the door to our knocking it will be to usher us into the a place even better than we expected.
