For instance, we hear about Queen Esther in the first reading, and she’s praying to the Lord for help and for protection. She still had to go before the king, taking her life into her own hands and plead for her people. God didn’t just do it for her. He set everything up, everything was taken care of, but she still had to do it. We know the same is true with us. We’re going to have to do whatever is required and God is going to be there with us. Sometimes He doesn’t make it easy, as we all know too well. But the reason He doesn’t make it easy is He wants us to grow in virtue. He wants us to trust. He wants us to learn from the experience something that is more profound than what we thought was going to be. Sometimes things don’t go right, sometimes they don’t go the way we think that they should or the way that we’ve expected, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that God isn’t with us or that it wasn’t His will that we do this. It’s just that we have to pray our way through it and follow Him. You see, what happens is that we will ask and we will seek and then we just forget about God. We decide that this is how I’m going to do it and God is going to be with me. We forget that we’re supposed to be following Him, instead of taking the lead. Then it causes us lots of trouble. If we will, just simply, let go and learn to trust, then we will follow God and He will take care of the rest. That is a hard thing for us. We can see it in a case like Esther. She had no choice. Her back was up against a wall, her people were going to be exterminated and she was the only possibility. She decides she is going to take her own life in her hands and that is the way it is going to be. If she dies, she dies. If she lives, she lives. In a case like that, well then, here we go. But in our day to day life it’s usually not that extreme. We don’t really have to trust God all that much, so we think. Obviously, if it’s life or death then we’re going to be praying pretty fervently and our trust is going to have to be pretty strong. But for most of us, that’s not the way it has to be. Therefore, it isn’t. We don’t pray as fervently as we should. We don’t seek to follow God, unless we were really in trouble. Then we would seek His will completely.

That is what we have to learn: Just to let go in any situation, not just in an extreme situation, but in any situation. Follow the Lord, instead of trying to take the lead. Let Him show us the way. Then, truly, we will find that the door will be opened and we will receive what we ask for because we are going to be following the Lord. We are going to be seeking His will, asking Him for what is right and just. God will answer those prayers. That is where the struggle comes. It’s not just flippantly asking for whatever you want and you’re going to get it. Rather, it’s a matter of shaping the heart, turning ourselves so that we’re seeking God’s will and we’re asking to do what He wants. It is seeking holiness. When we’re looking at it in that way and praying in that way, then we can be guaranteed that what we ask for, what we seek, will be answered. We will find what we are looking for when we are seeking God’s will.