The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 43
Forty-third Day
Grounds of hope in prayer. — Matt. vii. II.
THE certain foundation of this faith, exacted of us by Jesus Christ, that in praying we shall obtain, is the clear understanding that God is a father. How much more liberal, He tells us, will our heavenly Father be than an earthly one! 'If you, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him? * If you give away what has been given to you, and what you really hold only as a loan, how much more readily will not God give: — He who is the source of all possessions, and whose very nature, so to speak, is giving?
"You who are evil." Are we, then, evil even to our own children? This is what the Son of God would have us to understand here; and experience proves only too clearly that it is so, and that we think of ourselves rather than of them in the very goods that we bestow upon them. God alone, Who is generosity itself and the very essence of goodness, can do nothing but good to those who have recourse to Him.
We should always say in our hearts: — We may hope for all things from a father. And we may say again, with Christ: What is a raven? Yet our heavenly Father feeds it.
Will He who feeds the servants forget the sons? Could He Who remembers the animals be insensible to the wants of His children? Then, we may ask for everything: and we are bound to hope for everything, since we ask of a Father.