Luke and Matthew have collected in their respective gospels some words of Jesus which, doubtless, remained engraved in the minds of his closest followers. It is quite possible that he could have pronounced them while he moved with his disciples through the towns of Galilee, begging for something to eat, seeking accommodation or calling at the doors of the town folk.
Probably, they did not always get the desired response, but Jesus is not discouraged. His trust in the Father is absolute. His followers must learn to trust like him: “I say to you: ask and you will receive, seek and you will find.” Jesus knows what he is saying for this is his experience: “whoever asks receives, whoever seeks finds, and to whomsover knocks, the door is opened.”
If there is something we need to learn from Jesus in these times of crisis and confusion in his church it is trust. Not as a simplistic attitude of those who soothe themselves by hoping for better times. Less still as a passive and irresponsible posture, but as the most evangelical and prophetic behavior in following Jesus, the Christ, today. In fact, even though his three invitations point to the same basic attitude of trust in God, his language suggests diverse shades of behavior.
“To beg ” is the attitude proper to a poor man who needs to receive from another what he cannot obtain through his own efforts. This is the way Jesus imagined his followers: as poor men and women, aware of their fragility and need, without any trace of pride or self-sufficiency. It is not a misfortune to live in a church that is poor, weak and lacking in power. What is deplorable is to want to follow Jesus today while seeking protection from the world that can only come from the Father.
“To seek” is not only to pray. It is also to get moving, to take steps to achieve something that is hidden from us because it is covered over or hidden. This is how Jesus sees his followers: as “seekers of the kingdom of God and its justice”. Today it is normal to live in a disordered church that is faced with an uncertain future. What is strange is to see how we do not organize ourselves to seek together new ways to sow the gospel in a modern culture.
“To call out to” is to shout to someone we feel is not close by, but we believe can hear us and come to our aid. It is in this way that Jesus cried out to the Father in his loneliness on the cross. We understand how the faith of many Christians who learnt to express it, celebrate it and live it in a pre-modern culture gets dimmed today. What is lamentable is that we do not make greater efforts in our times to learn to follow Jesus by calling out to God against the contradictions, conflicts and problems of the modern world.