Potential in Persistence--17th Week of ORD Time 2007

Praise the Lord! We all have the desire to reach our potential. Deep within ourselves, we have a calling from God to become something great. I remember growing up watching a beer advertisement with a kid shooting buckets on the side of on old barn in the middle of a corn field and a song playing in the background, “I have a dream, I have a dream that comes from the heart of the heartland...” The end of the thirty second ad was of the kid grown to adulthood playing professional basketball. Notwithstanding that is was a beer advertisement and that isn't really what will bring about our full potential, I was drawn to the dream of starting someplace and ending another eventually reaching the potential one was called to!
How could we define human potential in light of our Catholic faith. Perhaps we could say that it is the growth of the human soul in the light of God's Truth. It is the yearning of our spirit to become what God desired for us to become. As Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” As one of our early Church Father's said, “God became man so man could become like God.” Our potential is to conform our lives to Christ and become more like him in everything we do. How is it that we continually fail to do so? Why are we stuck in this quagmire of self-doubt and inability to become more fully who we've been called to be? How can we not give as God has given to us?
To reach our potential, that is, what God has called us to be, we must be persistent. We must never give up on asking God to heal us, forgive us, nurture us, and love us. But so often we fail to ask God for the very thing we desire because we doubt or fail to believe that He can provide it! Heck, we've asked others in life to help us, but have had the door slammed in our face so why should God act any differently? In the end, the world does not want us to reach our potential. More specifically, the evil one does not want us to ask too much of God because He places within us a self-doubt and denial of His goodness. St. Paul says in Colossians, “...even when you were dead in your transgressions, he brought you to life.” Being dead doesn't just mean being nine feet under, but it means going through life not reaching the potential God has called us to.
The potential of the human soul is staggering, yet we fail to approach God in confidence and a persistent prayer. We go through life battered by relationships that have used us and we ourselves have used. We barter and exchange love as a commodity seeing an exchange of favors saying to one another, “I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. If you give, then I'll give.” This is a a love of condition. We are trained to think that to receive something we must give something back in return for it to have validity. Don't we see this in our own lives all the time?
We constantly are measuring how much we are to give and this economic of exchange mocks the very meaning of love because is places a condition on love rather than it being a free love of unconditional reciprocity. Because of the superabundance of stuff we have in the midst of materialism and individualism, we count the cost, we analyze the stock, and then make safe and prudent decisions as to how we will diversify and invest our love. We have dwindled and devalued love to a benign concept of frugality. In doing so, we have failed to live up to the potential God has called us to love unconditionally. We have in effect, projected our own concepts of a devalued love upon God thereby thinking that God works the same way we've experienced love to work in our world. Hence, we fail to approach God in confidence asking Him for the love we most desperately need!
Yet Jesus' words to us today are words that slice right through this distorted and diminished view of what it means to give in authentic love. He proposes this question to us, “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?” Transposed in today's language: What father would hand his son a row boat when he asks for a jet ski? Or hand him a rotary phone when he asks for an iphone?”
At the heart of Jesus' message seems to be an explanation to us that we are afraid to ask for what we truly need in life because we are afraid of a rejection of the request. Jesus is telling us that it is not so with our heavenly Father. We fail to persist in our asking God because we've experienced in our own lives, time and time again a conditional barter of love. We think that because the world lives by the rule, “if you give, I'll give,” that God will act the very same away. We then fail to approach God in persistence, consequently not reaching the potential of who He created us to be. We don't understand how we can then give as God gives and we wallow in the midst of not truly giving, but hording because of fear. We have projected onto God the same behavior. We've come to believe that we have to hang on to what we have because if we don't it will be ripped from our hands. We often fail to live up to our potential because we are afraid to approach God for what we want rather than what we really need.
Jesus shares with us yet another story of someone approaching another for some help, not just for himself, but for a friend at that....and at midnight! And the “friend” says, “I can't get up and give you anything!” Think of the times we've had to approach someone at the darnedest time to ask for help and we can't stand having to do so because it forces us to show vulnerability and humility. We are put into the stance of asking for help because we have no where else to turn. This is a direct assault on our pride. We've crashed and burned so many times in trying to find help that before long we give up looking for help.
We can transpose this into our relationship with Jesus. We are not persistent in continually seeking His love because we don't believe that He'll offer it to us. We think that what will be handed back to us is a scorpion or a snake, something that will harm us if we open ourselves up to it. We give up and throw in the towel. We say, “I won't even try going to confession anymore because it's been so long already. I won't even try loving as deeply as I could because it'll hurt too much anyway.” We even say, “I'll not even bother trying to learn my Catholic faith and go deeper because I won't understand it anyway. I haven't experienced what real giving in life is so why should I expect to receive it from God?”
But Jesus says, “Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened. For whoever asks; receives. Whoever seek; finds, and whoever knocks the door shall be opened.” Like Abraham, we must be insistent upon calling upon the Lord for what we need. We must not believe that because we've experienced only conditional love in our lives that God will work conditionally. Like the Psalmist we must pray fervently to God saying, “Lord, on the day I called for help you answered me.” If you have been wounded by a worldly view of love, do not transpose this onto God. He is a loving God who sent His Son so as to nail our transgressions to the cross.
We must be persistent in our prayer to reach the potential God has called us to. That potential is to give as God gives. To give without counting the cost. To give without reserve. To give unconditionally as God has given unconditionally to us. This potential, ultimately, is to love as God loves. Not to count costs and keep tabs, but to give because He has given to us. This is the potential that we have been called to and it will only be reached and revealed if we believe and persevere in a God who Himself gives unconditionally. We must and we will persevere and through faith and a belief in the power of God.