Saint Paul is unusually sharp today: “O foolish Galatians!”
Why is he so frustrated?
Because they have forgotten how the Christian life began for them.
They received Christ in faith. They received the Holy Spirit.
God began His work in them by grace.
Yet now they are behaving as though they can complete that work by their own strength.
“Having begun with the Spirit,” Paul asks, “are you now ending with the flesh?”
That temptation is not confined to the Galatians.
We can quietly turn Christianity into a project of self-improvement.
We try harder, become more disciplined, organise ourselves better, and imagine that holiness is something we can build out of our own resources.
But that is not how grace works.
The Gospel gives us a much better image.
A man has a visitor arrive at midnight and suddenly discovers that he has nothing to set before him. His cupboard is empty, so he goes to a neighbour and begins to knock.
That detail matters.
He knocks because he has nothing.
He cannot produce bread out of an empty cupboard. He has to receive what he does not possess.
That is a very good picture of prayer.
Prayer is not presenting God with the finished version of ourselves.
It is not telling Him that we are nearly there and only need a little help at the edges.
It is coming before Him honestly and admitting that there are things we simply cannot produce by ourselves.
There are moments when we know that very clearly.
We cannot manufacture charity when resentment has taken root.
We cannot create perseverance when we are tired of struggling.
We cannot produce holiness merely by force of will.
We need grace.
And so Our Lord says: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
Christ is not teaching us that God is reluctant and must be worn down. The reluctant neighbour is the contrast. If even he eventually opens the door, how much more will the Father give what is good to His children?
And Jesus names the greatest gift of all: the Holy Spirit.
That is important, because sometimes our prayers are very small compared with what God wants to give us.
We ask for the difficulty to disappear. God may want to give us patience.
We ask for an easier road. God may want to give us courage.
We ask Him to change the circumstances. He may begin by changing us.
That is the real work of grace.
Saint Paul is angry because the Galatians have forgotten that they began by receiving. The man in the Gospel understands it because his cupboard is empty.
Perhaps that is the point for us as well.
Holiness begins when we stop pretending that we have everything we need in ourselves.
We do not.
But we know where to knock.
