Gospel: Luke 11:5-13 

  God’s mercy is not only forgiving, but being generous and giving more and more. A few verses before the passage offered in the day’s Gospel, the Apostles asked Jesus to teach them to pray as John had done with his disciples. And the Lord taught them the Our Father. Afterwards the Gospel goes on to speak of the generosity of God, of that mercy of which he always gives more, more than what we believe can be given.

 

“Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight...”. There are golden friends, who would give their life for a friend, and there are other more or less good ones, but a few are friends in a more profound way. There are not very many of these: The Bible tells us one, two or three... no more. The very bond of friendship sees that we are given what we ask. 

 

But Jesus takes a step forward and speaks of the Father, of the heavenly Father gift, the divine love of the heavenly Father. In this way, the Lord wants to reawaken trust in prayer. And this is the prayer: ask, seek the way, and knock at the heart of God, the Father, who loves all of his creatures.

 

Yes! He will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! This is precisely the gift, this is the ‘more’ of God. What the Lord, the Father gives us that is ‘more’, is the Spirit: the true gift of the Father is what prayer does not dare to hope.  

 

It is this, the dynamic of prayer, which one does with a friend. The true friend is Jesus: it is he, in fact, who accompanies us and teaches us to pray. And our prayer must thus be Trinitarian because in Jesus Christ, God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.