This essay first appeared in our weekly Scripture reflection newsletter on July 19, 2025.
Gen 18:20-32; Col 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13.
You can find the readings for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time. of here.
The question of whether you can ask God for help would seem to have an obvious answer—yes! But for some people, it’s not so clear cut. More than a few people have told me that they feel guilty asking even for good things. (I’m presuming no one reading this wants to ask God for bad things, like harm coming to someone they don’t like.) The resistance to asking for good things usually falls under two categories. First, say some people, I should be grateful for what I have and asking for anything else is a sign of ingratitude. Second, other people have it worse than I do, so who am I to ask?
As for the first reason, we should indeed be grateful for what we have, rather than focusing on what we don’t. Ingratitude, as St. Ignatius Loyola said, is the worst, the most abominable of sins, and in fact the cause of most sins. And second, yes, some people do have it worse than you do. (By the same token, some people are better off.)
Neither of those reasons negates the truth that we all need help from God from time to time, and that part of being open and honest with God is admitting your need for help. And as with a friend, if you’re not honest with God and say only the things you think you should say, then as with any friendship, your relationship will grow cold, formal and stale.
Besides, as we see in today’s Gospel, Jesus clearly encourages his disciples to ask for good things. After all, the Our Father is divided into two parts: praise of God and petitionary prayer. In just a few lines, Jesus tells the disciples to ask for the following gifts: daily bread, forgiveness of sins and not being put to the test (that is, being tempted to sin).
As with a friend, if you’re not honest with God and say only the things you think you should say, then as with any friendship, your relationship will grow cold, formal and stale.
After that, for good measure, he offers the disciples a homey parable about a neighbor who knocks so insistently that, even though it’s the middle of the night, with the door locked and everyone asleep, the guy at home gets up to give his friend what he needs. To get the full impact of the parable, it’s important to note what the New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson calls the man’s “effrontery.” It’s not just that it’s the middle of the night; in addition to that, the “importunate friend” refuses to take no for an answer. This is the bold avatar that Jesus offers us when we are petitioning God.
Our first reading offers perhaps an even bolder example of that. It describes Abraham bargaining with God to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah from God’s wrath on account of the sins of those who live there. And, by the way, the sin that most Old Testament scholars describe here is the sin of not being hospitable to guests. So Abraham bargains in a quite humorous way, and I always imagine him speaking to God as Zero Mostel as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” spoke to God. “Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?” It’s an active, dynamic and even friendly interaction with God. This is what Jesus is also encouraging.
Now here’s the big question: What happens when we don’t get what we ask for? Even though Jesus says, “ask and you will receive,” sometimes we don’t. Anyone who has ever prayed knows that. A few days ago, my 93-year-old mom was exposed to Covid and I prayed hard, and even offered a Mass, that she wouldn’t get sick. Guess what? She did. So I asked and did not receive.
Why we don’t get what we pray for all the time is a mystery. And anyone who says that they can explain it away probably can’t. At least not fully.
Now, some people might say, “Well, maybe you got something else.” Your mom got patience, or you did, or you received some other spiritual grace that might be hard to see. And maybe that’s true. After all, at the end of the Gospel, Jesus says that the gift of the Holy Spirit is never refused to anyone.
But that doesn’t seem to be what Jesus is saying overall, at least as I read it. He seems to be saying: you ask for a fish, you get a fish. Not: you ask for a fish and you get the grace not to want fish.
Why we don’t get what we pray for all the time is, ultimately, a mystery. And anyone who says that they can explain it away probably can’t. At least not fully.
What are we to do with this? We are to continue to be in relationship with God as Abraham continued to be in relationship, and to be like the importunate neighbor who continued to ask. We are in a relationship with a God whose ways we will never completely comprehend in our lifetimes, but whose love, mercy and compassion we still trust in.
We keep praying, we keep asking and, above all, we keep trusting, even if it seems the answer is either no or not yet. At heart, this is all about believing in a God we don’t fully understand. Yet.
