First Week of Lent, Thursday, March 4

Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-35 Matthew 7:7-12

The story of Esther is worthwhile reading. Today's passage from the Book of Esther is about her recourse to prayer to prepare for a major challenge in her life. She was queen, beautiful, influential, but still relied on prayer and fasting to do what her people needed her to do: no less than to save them from annihilation. The reading today offers us her prayer, but it is helpful to understand the circumstances. The King's principal advisor, Haman, has decided to kill all the Jews in the vast kingdom of Persia on a certain day because he hates them. Unknown to him and the King, Esther is Jewish and receives word from her uncle Mordecai that this plan is being hatched and the king must be told. The rule of the royal household is that no one approaches the king unsummoned without risking the pain of death. Esther must approach him before it's too late and hope that he will receive her without becoming upset because she must speak to him about the matter before Haman's plan is carried out.

On the one hand, she is afraid; on the other, she is filled with peace because she asks the Jewish people to pray with her and for her, and she relies on God. Esther has the qualities and good fortune we see in a current day rags-to-riches movie star. She was an orphan, adopted by her uncle Mordecai, and then selected by the King of Persia to become his queen because of her beauty and intelligence. But she is quite the opposite of today's ?beautiful people? who feel they do not need God, that prayer is a sign of weakness, that success depends on talent, good looks, brains, strategic maneuvering, and whatever else on earth can help to get ahead. Esther has always prayed and now turns to prayer again. She is not desperate in her prayer. Many today pray as a last resort, when all else fails. Not Esther. Her entire life, in the midst of splendor and admiration as the beautiful queen, is dedicated to God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Precisely because of her deep goodness, the King will do anything for her; even grant her half his kingdom. If we go to the Book of Esther, we see that she the king receives her kindly and promises to do for her whatever she asks. As the drama unfolds, the king is outraged by the plan of Haman and has him put to death. Esther's uncle Mordecai is appointed in his place and all the Jewish people are saved.

In today's Psalm (138), the psalmist reflects on how good God has been to him whenever he called on Him and asked for help. God rescued him, strengthened him. We need that trust in God. When we are beleaguered, we may seek compensations, we look for comfort in earthly things, we may overeat, drink too much, go shopping, indulge in our sensuality and justify all this behavior because we feel alone and abandoned. Not Esther. Alone, and she prays. Facing death, and she seeks comfort in the Lord. We have to imitate her. Meditate on Psalm 138.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Again, as in the Gospel of a few days ago, Jesus challenges us with a demanding task: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In that reading, the demanding task was to forgive. In today's Gospel, before Jesus tells us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, he advises: Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened. How can we live a moral life and love others? By asking God's help in prayer. Pray. You and I cannot do it on our own by ourselves, relying on our own strength. We call upon God. Let's not give up with the excuse that God is asking too much.

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