Sunday Reflection_17th Sunday of the Year
“Lord, teach us to pray.” The request of the disciples is one that Christians have had down through the centuries. Many spiritual writers have written at great length about prayer. Ignatius of Loyola instructed his followers in a type of meditation known today as the “Ignatian Method”. Teresa of Avila wrote a long treatise on prayer for her Sisters in “The Way of Perfection”. Recently there has been a renewed interest in the form of prayer known as Lectio Divina – one reads slowly and reflectively a passage from scripture and prays over it.
In today’s gospel Jesus says three important things about prayer to his disciples – and to us.
Firstly, in his response to the disciples asking for an instruction “as John the Baptist taught his followers to pray” (one wonders what that instruction was) Jesus responds with an instruction, worded differently in Luke and Matthew. When the “instruction” turned into a prayer “formula” (the text in Matthew) is not clear. However, it happened early in the history of the Church. But by becoming a formula it can easily be said by people without attending to the instruction contained in the words.
The most amazing part of the instruction is the opening words “Our Father”. There have been saints who have started with those words and could not go beyond them. Jesus taught his disciples that they should approach God as a loving father in all their prayers.
He also taught them that they were to praise God and to ask that God’s kingdom will come and God’s will be done. In other words, prayer in the first place is to be focused on God and who God is and not on their needs. However, the instruction goes on to say that they must ask God to provide for them their daily needs, forgive their sins, and protect them against evil forces.
It is the first part of the instruction that we can often forget. Prayer often turns into “prayer for” – asking God to respond to our requests. But Jesus wanted to us to praise and thank God for all the wonderful gifts God has given us – this marvellously created world, our families, the people we love and who love us, the special gifts given us, etc. And He wanted us to long for his kingdom – a kingdom of peace and love – a kingdom that God alone can bring.
Secondly, Jesus told his disciples to pray persistently if they would have God respond to their needs. Only Jesus would have the audacity to compare God to a neighbour who doesn’t want to get out of bed to respond to his neighbour’s need but in the end so does because of his neighbour’s insistence. Jesus said that God wants them to pursue asking that their needs might be met. He knew it would be easy to give up when the first answer seems to be “no”. But like the man who needed bread to offer his guest they must persist in asking – that is what Jesus told them to do.
Thirdly, Jesus assured them that God will give them only what is good for them. God is a loving father who would not give his children things that might not satisfy or might even harm them – a stone (nicely shaped like a loaf) instead of bread, a snake (instead of an eel), or a scorpion (all curled up) instead of an egg. But Jesus assured them that the loving Father would always give them the Holy Spirit – the gift that is always needed even when they don’t realize it.
These are lessons we can keep in mind for ourselves when we come to pray.
19/7/16