9781644135945

The Easter Cycle
heart of the Father. “Amen, amen, I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in My name,
He will give it you” (Gospel).
“Hitherto you have not asked anything in My name.” It is true that the apostles had asked the
Lord: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk 11:1), and He had taught them how to say the Our Father.
And indeed, they had asked Him for an increase of faith. But as yet they had not prayed to the
Father in the name of Jesus, basing their request on the fact of His death or on the merits of the
blood that He had shed. This was not possible for them, since it was necessary that the Lord first
pour forth His blood and sacrifice His life on the cross. It was necessary that He first, as the high
priest of the New Covenant “having obtained eternal redemption” by His own blood, enter once
into the holy of holies (Heb 9:12). The Lord begins to exercise His office as our intermediary
at the time of His ascension. Thus previous to that time the apostles could not ask in His name.
But there was still another reason why they could not pray in His name. Previous to His
passion and death Christ had not revealed to them entirely the nature of His mission. They had
always had visions of a temporal kingdom and throne of glory. That He was to die on the cross
they could not comprehend. How could they pray in His name as long as they believed Him
to be something other than what He actually was? They came to the correct concept of Him
and His mission only after His death and resurrection and ascension, only after the descent of
the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. Only then did they begin to understand that no one can pray in
the name of Jesus unless he bases his prayers on Christ’s merits, on His suffering and death, and
offers his prayers to the Father through the merits of the blood of Christ. Only he can come to
the Father who is one in spirit with the crucified Christ. Only he can expect to be heard who,
like the Lord, is willing to be obedient even to death, and who can say with Jesus, “My meat is
to do the will of Him that sent Me” ( Jn 4:34). Only when we have acquired the spirit of Christ,
His point of view, conformity to the will of God, can we actually pray in the name of Jesus.
Then our prayers will be united to His prayers and incorporated in them, to be acknowledged
by Him as His own and offered by Him to His Father. Such prayers will certainly be answered.
“Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full” (Gospel). Our Savior has given the
solemn promise, in His own name and in the name of His Father, that “whatsoever you shall
ask the Father in My name, that will I do” ( Jn 14:13). In prayer we have an unfailing means for
obtaining light, power, and grace from God. “For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that
seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened” (Lk 11:10). He who fails to ask,
will not receive; he who asks little, shall receive but little; while he who asks much, will receive
much. This divine rule in the order of grace is borne out by experience and by the history of
the Church. It is the law that “to the humble [God] giveth grace” (1 Pt 5:5); and “He hath filled
the hungry with good things; and the rich He hath sent empty away” (Lk 1:53). In prayer we
abandon ourselves and go to the Father. Why? We become conscious of our own nothingness
and misery; in all humility we acknowledge our nothingness and our insufficiency; we humbly
confess that we are unable to help ourselves, that we cannot live by ourselves, and that of ourselves
we can accomplish nothing. For this reason we lift our hearts to God, for “every best gift
and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” ( Jas 1:17). Thus we
throw open the doors of our being to the infinity of God, that His light and power may stream in.
Prayer is the respiration of the soul; the soul exhales its own nothingness and inhales God.
Prayer is the abandonment of self and a dedication to God. If we would preserve and nourish
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