How Much More

Most of us pray like people who expect to be turned away. We ask once, politely, and when nothing seems to happen, we quietly conclude that God is busy, or unwilling, or saving his gifts for holier people. Then we do the thing that feels responsible. We get to work. We sign up for one more program/ We read one more book. We promise to try harder, as though grace were a starter kit and the rest of the Christian life were up to us. We never revisit our request with God in prayer. Under both habits sits the same suspicion: that God is stingy, and that whatever he gives to us has to be earned or pried loose from him.

Today’s readings take that suspicion apart from two sides. In Galatians, Paul is furious with converts who received the Holy Spirit simply by believing what they heard, and who now think they can finish the job by their own effort. “Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” In the Gospel, Jesus tells a story about a man pounding on a neighbor’s door at midnight, and then promises that the heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to anyone who asks.

Franciscan Media remembers Saint John Leonardi today, a sixteenth-century priest whose story opens with the question most of us ask when we feel small: “I am only one person! Why should I do anything?” So here’s the question these readings put to you and me: what are we working so hard to earn that God is waiting to give us if we were to ask again in faith?

The Readings

First Reading: Galatians 3:1-5

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so many things in vain?—if it really is in vain. Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?

Gospel: Luke 11:5-13

And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Scriptural Analysis

Paul has just finished his account of Antioch with a sentence that sums up the whole letter: if justification came through the law, “then Christ died to no purpose” (Galatians 2:21). Cardinal Albert Vanhoye and Peter Williamson describe what comes next as a kind of volcanic eruption. “In 3:1 Paul explodes.” He drops “brothers” and calls his converts by their regional name, with an insult attached: “O foolish Galatians!”¹ Frank Matera notes that the word, anoētoi (ah-NOH-ay-toy), is the same one the risen Lord uses for the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:25). The charge, Matera says, is a refusal to see what is right in front of them. Saint Thomas Aquinas, who worries that Jesus forbade calling a brother a fool (Matthew 5:22), answers with Augustine that it depends on why you say it, and Paul said it to correct them. Thomas passes on an old gloss on the verse: “He says this in sorrow.”²

“Who has bewitched you?” Matera says the verb baskainein (bas-KAI-nein) appears nowhere else in the New Testament. It means to put someone under a spell, as by an evil eye. Paul says what makes the spell so absurd: Christ had been “publicly portrayed as crucified” before their eyes. The Greek is prographō (pro-GRAH-foh). Vanhoye and Williamson paraphrase it this way: “We painted a picture for you of Jesus’ passion and death.” Paul’s preaching put the cross in front of them like a placard. “Contemplating Christ on the cross should have guarded the Galatians from wandering off the right path.” Aquinas, following Saint Jerome, reads it the same way and adds the sting: “You once obeyed the truth of the faith, but now you do not.”³

Then Paul asks the one question that settles everything. “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” The Galatians knew the answer, because they had been there. Vanhoye and Williamson point out that as pagans they didn’t even know the law of Moses. They heard Paul preach Christ crucified and risen, they believed, and the Spirit came, visibly enough that nobody contested it. Ordinarily, they note, the rule is that hearing isn’t enough and conduct is what counts. At the threshold of the Christian life that rule gives way: “At the beginning, the fundamental disposition necessary is a receptive one.” And they put it flatly: “The indwelling Holy Spirit is a divine gift and not the result of any human work.”⁴

“Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” The verb Paul uses, epiteleisthe (eh-pee-TEH-lie-stheh), can mean to finish or to be made perfect, and Matera thinks the second sense is the point. The agitators in Galatia had promised the converts a higher level of perfection through circumcision. Vanhoye and Williamson explain why Paul calls that “flesh.” People who build on the works of the law are trusting their own strength, which is human and bound to fail, and Jeremiah has a word for that: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his arm” (Jeremiah 17:5).⁵

Note that in Verse 5 there is a change in tense, and the change matters. “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you” is in the present tense. Matera says it shows that “the granting of the Spirit is an ongoing experience in the life of the community.” Vanhoye and Williamson agree: Paul speaks of the first gift of the Spirit and of a God who keeps generously supplying it.⁶ God was still giving, yet the Galatians were acting as if the account had closed.

Now the Gospel, which follows directly on the Our Father. Pablo Gadenz notes that Jesus, having taught his disciples what to say, now teaches them how to say it. The parable is built on hospitality. A traveler arrives at midnight, the host has nothing to set before him, and he goes next door to borrow three loaves, which ties the story to the petition for daily bread. Luke Timothy Johnson adds that the Greek world assumed “friends hold all things in common,” which is why the request isn’t outrageous. The answer from inside is grumpy anyway: “Do not bother me.” Gadenz points out that the Greek actually has the connotation of forbidding something already going on. The neighbor is truly saying, “Stop bothering me.” The man has been knocking for some time.⁷

Then the twist: “because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs.” The word is anaideia (an-AI-day-ah), and both commentators say it means something closer to shamelessness. Johnson says the shamelessness shows in two ways: the nerve of making the demand at midnight and the refusal to take no for an answer, and that the sleeper finally gets up to protect himself. Gadenz draws the lesson for prayer: “the person in need can boldly keep asking God without embarrassment, confident that God will respond and provide help.”⁸ The Fathers in the Catena Aurea (kah-TAY-nah OW-ray-ah) of Saint Thomas are quick to say who the friend inside really is. Theophylact: “God is that friend, who loveth all men, and wills that all should be saved.” Saint Ambrose: “Who is a greater friend to us, than He who delivered up His body for us?” And Saint Basil explains the wait at the door: “perhaps He delays purposely, to redouble your earnestness and coming to him, and that you may know what the gift of God is.”⁹

“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Gadenz notes that the Greek verbs describe continuous action, so the sense is keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Persistence is built into the grammar, and this is an important point to take from this text. Our prayers and petitions to our Lord need to be continuous. Saint Augustine, in the Catena, reads the promise as a rebuke to our hesitation: “Let human slothfulness blush, He is more willing to give than we to receive.”¹⁰

Then the argument Jesus has been building toward. Johnson identifies it as the rabbinic argument from the lesser to the greater, qal wehomer (kahl veh-KHO-mer). If a sleepy neighbor will get up for a pest, and if fathers “who are evil” won’t hand a hungry boy a snake, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Matthew’s version promises “good things” (Matthew 7:11). Luke names the best of them. Gadenz says the confidence behind this kind of prayer rests on one thing: “What makes such bold and unrelenting prayer possible is an attitude of filial trust in the Father.” The Catechism draws the same conclusion from this parable: to the one who prays this way, “the heavenly Father will ‘give whatever he needs,’ and above all the Holy Spirit who contains all gifts.”¹¹

Put the two readings side by side, and they answer one another. The Galatians received the Spirit the way the Gospel describes, by hearing and believing and asking, and then decided that a gift that easy couldn’t be the whole story. Jesus says it is the whole story, and that the Father hasn’t stopped giving. Vanhoye and Williamson make the connection themselves: “The good news is that God is still eager to supply his Spirit to his people and to work miracles among us. Jesus’ words in Luke 11:9-13 explain how.”¹²

Daily Application

The interior movement these readings ask for is to receive before we achieve. That’s harder for capable people than for anyone else. Most of us are good at effort and bad at asking, and so we keep trying to finish by the flesh what God began by the Spirit: one more resolution, one more self-improvement project, one more attempt to become the kind of Catholic God might finally be pleased with. Paul calls that bewitched. Jesus calls the alternative shamelessness. It is the direct admission that we have nothing to set before our guests and need to go knock on a door.

Vanhoye and Williamson ask an uncomfortable question. If Paul stood up in your parish and asked whether God “supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you,” would anyone know what he meant? Most of us were baptized as infants and confirmed young, and we observe that many Catholics received the grace of those sacraments without the faith and desire that let them bear their full fruit.¹³ The Catechism is precise about this: the sacraments “bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.” The Spirit you received at Confirmation hasn’t gone anywhere. The door is still there to knock on. It is just waiting for you to knock.

So knock. Every day this week, at a fixed time, ask the Father by name for the gift Jesus promised: Come, Holy Spirit. Ask the way the man at midnight asked, without embarrassment and without giving up after the first try. And when you pray the Our Father, slow it down. Gadenz recommends taking it phrase by phrase in an extended quiet time, and he quotes Saint Teresa of Avila on what that slowness opens up: “We can be aware that we are with him, of what we are asking him, of his willingness to give to us, and how eagerly he remains with us.”¹⁴

Saint John Leonardi is a good companion for that kind of asking. Franciscan Media tells how he answered his own “I am only one person!” by becoming a priest and working in hospitals and prisons, how political opposition to his new community kept him exiled from his hometown of Lucca for almost the rest of his life, and how Saint Philip Neri gave him a place to stay, along with the care of his cat. He founded the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in 1579. He died at 68 of a disease he caught nursing plague victims. Franciscan Media’s reflection on him igives us one line that is worth keeping: “God and one person are a majority!”¹⁵

Stop trying to earn what the Father is waiting to give. Ask for the Holy Spirit today, keep knocking, and trust the One who already got up and opened the door.

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Notes

1. ↑ Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williamson, Galatians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 98.
2. ↑ Frank J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina 9 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 111; Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, trans. F. R. Larcher, OP (Albany, NY: Magi, 1966), chap. 3, lect. 1, at isidore.co.
3. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 111-112; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 98; Aquinas, Commentary on Galatians, chap. 3, lect. 1.
4. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 98-99.
5. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 112-115; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 100-101.
6. ↑ Matera, Galatians, 113; Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 101.
7. ↑ Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 222; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 178.
8. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 178; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 223.
9. ↑ Theophylact, Saint Ambrose and Saint Basil, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), on Luke 11:5-8.
10. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 224; Saint Augustine, Sermon 105, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 11:9-13.
11. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 178; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 224; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 2613.
12. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 104.
13. ↑ Vanhoye and Williamson, Galatians, 103; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1131.
14. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 224, quoting Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection 29.6.
15. ↑ “Saint John Leonardi,” Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media, accessed October 4, 2026, franciscanmedia.org.

Books Cited

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• Albert Vanhoye and Peter S. Williamson, Galatians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2019)
• Frank J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina 9 (Liturgical Press, 1992)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels (Baronius Press)
• Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image)