Knocking at Midnight
Julián Carrón - The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, “as John the Baptist taught his disciples.” We, too, often desire to pray well, and in this passage Jesus responds to this concern of the disciples and ours. The first thing He does is teach them the Our Father, which we all know: the more we recite it with awareness, the more we realize that it contains everything we need.
The main thing is that, with this prayer, we turn to God—introduced by Jesus—as a Father. It is Jesus who invites us to call God “Father.” It is true that He relates to the Father in a completely preferential and unique way, but He introduces His disciples, and all of us, to this relationship. The whole purpose of His coming into history is to introduce us to the relationship with His Father. We are not alone with our troubles, challenges, and needs: Jesus knows this and invites us to turn to God as “Father” with all our needs.
It is moving to see how Jesus takes His disciples seriously and invites them to identify with the normal situations of life. Imagine a friend who comes to you at midnight with a need: if you do not respond because he is your friend, you will at least respond so that he will leave you alone. Jesus says to His disciples, “If this happens among you, how much more will your heavenly Father answer you? Which of you, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will you give him a scorpion? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
What is the Holy Spirit? It is the greatest gift that Christ can give us in life! It is the Holy Spirit who makes Christ so present and attractive that He is the companion we need in order to live, because we all know that when life is urgent—as happens in sickness or in certain circumstances—we need “not only bread,” but that Presence, which is the purpose of Jesus’ coming. The reason He wants to introduce us to a relationship with the Father is to enable us to live every circumstance, whatever our need, with the same certainty with which He first lived the challenges that the Father did not spare even Him.
For this reason, we can be certain, as Jesus was certain, that the Father would not abandon Him. This does not mean that the Father spared Him death because He was His Son. St. Paul is amazed by this: “Hardly anyone is willing to die for a righteous person,” but the true gesture of the Father’s love toward us is that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:7–9). The Father did not spare His Son so that the Son might die for us.
Jesus introduces us to this certainty not only by teaching us to pray, but by interceding for us now, because, after His passion and death, He entered definitively into the sanctuary of God. St. Paul, in the Second Reading, says that God has given life to us, risen with Him—the life for which we are made, the life for which we desire to live more and more, the life that is ever more life.
Here we return to the First Reading, to Abraham’s prayer: “Perhaps there will be ten there…” Even if there were not ten, at least one—His Son—gave His life for all of us. We can be certain that this “one” exists! It is Christ, who continues to intercede for us; therefore, we can turn to Him with the certainty that our question will be answered. According to God’s plan, we cannot ask for anything that is not for our good: He is the good who leads us to our Destiny, sometimes along a mysterious path, but no less certain for that, as we have seen with His Son, Jesus.
For this reason, we are certain that we can turn to God the Father, through the presence of the risen Christ and with the power of the Holy Spirit, so that our prayer may be appropriate for our true good.
Unrevised notes by the author.
Notes from the homily by Fr. Julián Carrón July 27, 2025
(First Reading: Gen 18:20–32; Psalm 137 (138); Second Reading: Col 2:12–14; Gospel: Lk 11:1–13)
