Dear friends,
What is a prayer? A prayer is a conversation with God. To put otherwise, it is communication between God and the human being who opens up to his/her Creator. In today’s readings we are reminded of the purpose of it. When we pray, we should give priority to God rather to ourselves. Does not Jesus tell us that our Father knows what we need even before we tell Him and ask for it? Yes, He did. Then what?
What striking in today’s gospel reading is the fact that disciples are asking the Lord to teach them how to pray. Their humility which, I would say, is fruit of their awareness about their own spiritual emptiness, leads them to ask for the Lord to teach them how to pray. It is always difficult to acknowledge one’s own emptiness especially with regards to the ways we relate to God. The disciples could have been proud of themselves and claim that they know everything because they were the closest collaborators of Jesus. On the contrary, the closer they were to the Lord, the more fragile and lesser articulate they felt in their relationship with the Father. The truth they convey to us is that our relationship with the Lord should always nurture in us hunger and thirst for a deeper relationship in our conversation with Him.
Have you ever thought about this? Maybe you have, and you realized how sometimes meaningless and empty your words are in your prayer. When you look at your focus during your prayer time, you may wonder whether these or those are the right words you should have uttered. What is the focus of your prayer? What are you asking for, and what are telling your Lord? Jesus says, “you do not receive what you ask for in prayers, because you do not know how to pray.” So, let us, as disciples, ask the Lord to teach us to pray. While He gives us the structure of true prau in the ‘Lord’s Prayer,’ Jesus reminds of two major things in our prayer life: perseverance and trust. God is our Father who will always provide for us and give us what we ask for with humility and trust.
During this time of Eucharistic Revival, one of the most important prayer is Eucharistic Adoration. We come to the Lord not only to talk to Him but to listen to Him. In Eucharistic Adoration, we enter in deep relationship of interior conversation with the Eucharistic Christ, present in front of us. There we experience the murmuring and whispering of the Lord that we hear loudly in our hearts and souls. There, we hear the Lord saying and proclaiming once more His love for us all and for you. There, He calls you by your name, telling you about the deep love He has for you, and assuring you of His endless care and support. In the Eucharistic Adoration, we hear once more the Lord telling us to lay everything, our loads at His feet.
Today, as we ask for the Lord to teach us how to pray, His respond is, “come and spend some minutes with me. Take your time and gaze upon my face as I look at you and pour my love upon you.” You are His own, and He will always give you even more than what you ask for… Besides you corporal needs, He gives you abundance of the Holy Spirit when you ask him in prayers with perseverance and humility.
Let us continue to pray for one another and for our parish family.
Fr. Emery