MAY292024

My younger brother, four or five years old, would preface any request he made to my mother with “Now don’t say me no.” James and John seem to have been in the same school when they approached Jesus. “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Last week the reading was taken from the Epistle of James which has the line:  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. How should we ask? The model is that of Jesus in Gethsemane. He had his preference — he would have prefered to avoid the cross — but after stating his preference he appended “But no my will but thine be done.” We have our preferences: good health, a long life, a happy family, a comfortable income. Certainly we can present those prayers to God but always with the proviso that we are submitting these prayers with the awareness that God’s will for us is better than anything we could ask or imagine.