10 October 2013
Thursday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
I remember us going “house hunting” in the Brooklyn of my childhood. While the adults looked at the house in question, my sister and I played at the swing set. I had my stuffed animal with me. That animal was my totem, my security blanket, my pal.
Then the adults were urging us away from the swings, and into the car. And when we got home I realized my animal friend had been left behind, and there was no going back. I prayed and prayed, but to no avail. Loss. Discouragement. Sadness.
In the ensuing sixty years, I have had many lesser loves, many attachments to that which is less than the loving, wise, God. When we lose them, it is hard to know how to react: we know we should not sulk, and yet to feign an indifference we do not have smells false. We can and should pray for what we want, but the problem is, we don’t know what’s best for us. What seems so very important at the time – essential to our happiness, to our very lives! – is invariably a block to our growth in wisdom and freedom before God. And so Jesus, telling us to ask, yet adds that we will be given the Holy Spirit. Wisdom, strength, freedom: becoming a child of God is worth letting go our teddy bears. Though there is a time to have them too – and a time to leave them at the swing set.