Jonah prayed to God but was afraid God would say yes. Queen Esther prayed to God and did not know what to expect. Yet, both prayers were answered by God. What do we expect when we pray to God? Do we have the faith to receive anything God does as a gift? Readings for Today.
What do you expect God to do? Homily for Thursday, February 26, 2026
Yesterday we had the reading about the Prophet Jonah, who is an interesting character to say the least, but at the core of his unwillingness to preach to the people of Nineveh was his deep prejudice against the people of Nineveh.
He did not want Nineveh to be saved, quite the opposite, but he knows God and he knows that God is forgiving and loving and so ultimately he goes and as Dave said yesterday, his worst fears are realized. The people of Nineveh convert.
Today we get a rather interesting woman, Queen Esther. Esther had a rather interesting life. She wasn’t born into royalty. She was raised by her uncle, Mordecai. She became queen when Vashti, who was the queen, became intransigent and wouldn’t do what the king wanted and we know from the story she must have been strikingly beautiful because she captures the king’s attention almost immediately, but there’s one hidden fact that she doesn’t share in becoming queen and that is that she is Jewish.
Now Mordecai was a man of great principle. Mordecai was the one who was going to profess his faith in God and it gets him into trouble and he appeals to Queen Esther both on a faith level, this is the chosen people, this is God, but also on a practical level. Don’t think just because you’re the queen that that will save you.
And so she takes a chance. She decides that she is going after today’s prayer to tell the king to save Mordecai. When Jonah prayed, he was hoping God wouldn’t listen. When Queen Esther prayed, she prayed even if God didn’t give her what she wanted. She was willing to admit that her faith in God was stronger than her desire to get her own way.
Now we know in this story that she does get what she wants. Ultimately, Haman, who was the king’s official who created this mess, gets what he wanted for the Jewish people. He’s killed by the king on the very instrument of death that he created for the Jewish people. And so Esther is an amazing woman of faith and in a way when we think about Lent and we say we focus on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, I don’t think it’s just that we bring those words to our head.
Rather, I think we ask God to teach us to pray more deeply, more fully, more honestly. That we ask God to teach us what it means actually to pray. Because at least for me, when I think of some of my prayers, I’m really praying for what I want. And then there’s that happy occurrence when what I want and what God wants happen to coincide.
This season of Lent is a time for us ultimately to open our hearts more to the grace of conversion. And so when Jesus talks about prayer in the gospel, he isn’t saying ask and it will be given to you as if it means whatever you want will be given to you. What he is saying is ask and it will be given to you. What? The will of God. God will answer your prayer.
It’s not that God doesn’t listen. It’s not that God ignores us. But sometimes God answers our prayer in a way that’s different than we thought it would be answered. We need to seek for God’s presence in our lives. To ask God to open our eyes more fully so we can see more clearly where it is that he is active in our lives. And we have to knock, seeking to gain entrance into the presence of God so that we might grow in holiness. Let us ask the Lord during this season of Lent that as we focus on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, these actions may in fact deepen our conversion and make us more like Jesus.
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