You do not know what you ask for
Fr. Ascânio - What do many people ask of God? Temporal prosperity, good business, health, honors, triumphs that excite vanity.
Original in portuguese here.
Our Lord promised to hear all our prayers. “Ask and you shall receive”; knock and the door will be opened. What beautiful promises and parables about prayer, which encourage and inspire us to trust! However, as God is a Father and better than us knows what is good for our eternal salvation, He does not always answer our prayers. Why? Where are His Divine promises? Ah! We do not know what we ask for. Would a loving father give a loaded revolver, a knife, a razor to a mischievous little child to play with?
The child cries, insists, but cannot be granted. It would be cruelty to fulfill such a request. What do many people ask of God? Temporal prosperity, good business, health, honors, triumphs that excite vanity. And Our Lord sees well that everything will be misused, that prosperity, like a wicked stepmother, will be the ruin of that poor, weak, and frivolous soul! And, instead of granting it, Our Lord sends crosses and setbacks. Will Our Lord fail to fulfill His promises? No, a thousand times no! Many times, it is a greater grace to deny than to grant what we ask for.
When a certain mother asked the Divine Master for two places in the Eternal Kingdom for her sons, one on the right and the other on the left, Jesus said to her, “You do not know what you ask for!” The same can be repeated for those who ask God for temporal goods and forget about eternal goods. Ah! This is very true: God, out of mercy, denies what He would grant out of justice and as punishment. Oh, if only we knew!