The true curmudgeon's response to "Good Morning." In the world of the Christian's world every morning is good because we know that each new day was made by God.
The gospel today is the famous, ask and you shall receive...passage.
And we all know that we shall not always receive what we ask for.
Instead the passage promises that God knows how to give us "what is good."
Here is where it suddenly gets tricky.
Moral good we know, in the sense that God has taught us through the Law, the Prophets, Jesus, and the Church what is right and wrong.
Here we are addressing another kind of good, what is good for us at a particular moment in our lives.
Our natural instinct is to avoid pain, and seek pleasure. In this way we are not too different from animals. It's why dogs will eat chocolate and drink antifreeze, because they taste good.
We are suppose to live on a different level. We have been given by God the capacity to transcend, to see the long view, the eternal view. We have the capacity to make choices with a view not just to the momentary pleasure or pain but with a goal of eternal life. But how often do we use this capacity?
We are like the person with a beautiful voice who refuses to sing. We have a gift, and let it go to waste. Look at any tv commercial or campaign ad. They all promise solutions that are easy, quick, and painless. And we, like the dog with the poisonous chocolate swallow it, because it's what we want to hear. We choose the animal life.
Jesus invites us to the truly human life, to use the incredible gifts of intellect and will he has given us, to see the truth. The medicine we need tastes nasty. The best road is sometimes rough. And there is such a thing a good pain.
