May Jesus Christ be praised and may his holy Mother pray for
us.
Last week we encountered Mary and Martha in Bethany and the
Lord Jesus taught us that only one thing was important. This week, the Lord Jesus teaches us to pray,
and the Lord Jesus teaches us about prayer.
In our reading today from the Gospel of Luke, the disciples
find the Lord Jesus praying in a certain place.
And when he had finished his time of prayer, the disciples asked the
Lord Jesus to teach them how to pray.
This was a common practice in those days for a master to teach his
disciples a common prayer. This prayer
was a sign of the relationship that the disciples had with the master. The disciples often learned a prayer and they
learned how to pray from their master.
This is the first thing that we learn about prayer today: we can and we
must learn how to pray. Prayer is
something that we learn how to do. We
learn from the Lord Jesus and we learn from his Church. We learn from the Scriptures and we learn
from the saints. And most often, dear
brothers and sisters, we learn to pray from our mothers on earth who prayed
with us to our Father in heaven. We
learn to walk. We learn to speak. We learn to read, and we learn how to pray.
The second thing that we learn about prayer today is that
prayer is an expression of a relationship.
The Lord Jesus invites us to call God our Father. No one had ever suggested that we could
address the Lord of heaven and earth with a title of such intimacy as
“Father.” No one had ever dared to
address God as Father, until the Lord Jesus did so. And Jesus addressed God as Father, because he
is the Son. Now the Son of God has
invited us to call his Father our Father.
Our prayer is an expression of our relationship with God the Father
through our relationship with God the Son.
As we learn how to pray and as we express our relationship
with God the Father through our prayer, our prayer must be humble and
persistent. In our first reading from
the book of Genesis, we see Abraham, with humility and persistence, interceding
with the Lord for the people of Sodom. In
the Gospel, the Lord Jesus tells us about the friend who persistently asks for
food for his guests. Prayer requires
humility, because when we pray, we admit our own need.
The Lord Jesus teaches us to pray with confidence and
expectation. However, the Lord is not
teaching us that our prayer will be answered in the precise way that we want
our prayer to be answered. In the
gospel, the Lord Jesus teaches us that God the Father will only give us those
things which are for our good and in accord with his will. The Father will not give to us something that
will harm us. The Father will not give
to us something that will lead us away from him.
We pray with confidence and expectation because we address
our prayers to the Father who loves us.
We pray with confidence and expectation because we pray to Father with
the voice of the Beloved Son. In our
baptism we were buried with Christ, raised to life, and united to Him so that
our prayers to the Father are offered with his prayer to the Father. We make
our prayer to the Father through Christ, and with Christ and in Christ.
As we celebrate the Eucharist, we join in the prayer of
Christ our High Priest. May we allow the
Lord Jesus and the Sacred Liturgy of His Church to teach us how to pray. May our humble prayers at this Mass express
our relationship with the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. And may we offer this sacrifice of praise
with confidence and expectation to God the Father who loves us. Amen.
Preached at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic
Church, Monroe, NC
