Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Prayer has always been somewhat a mystery to me. I believe strongly in God’s sovereignty. God is God. The One who created everything seen and unseen maintains it, recreates it, and upholds it. God is in control. God is not reliant upon me for anything; God does not need me to do anything in order to accomplish divine plans and purposes. As my Honduran friends say, God knows what He does. Objectively, God does not need me to pray – God can and will accomplish what God wills and desires apart from any action I take. And yet, God invites, requires, and indeed commands me to pray! It’s a wondrous mystery to me.
As a convert to Catholicism, learning Catholic culture has been a meaningful (and fun!) part of my journey. One of the aspects of Catholic prayer that seemed bizarre to me at first is the practice of praying the Lord’s Prayer in any and all situations as a means of seeking divine intervention. For example, a friend and I set out on a car trip, and he says, “Let’s pray an Our Father.” I think to myself, “Why would we do that? We should pray and ask God to give us safety on our journey!” Or, we learn that a loved one is sick, and my friend says, “let’s pray an Our Father.” Confused, I think again, “no, we need to cry out to God in prayer asking specifically for healing for that person!” In all my years as a non-Catholic Christian, the Lord’s Prayer was part of the liturgy in many of the churches I attended, but we did not tend to pray it outside of the context of a worship service. Lately I’ve come to appreciate the simple power of the Lord’s Prayer, and the Church’s wisdom in teaching us to pray it regularly.
In today’s Gospel, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, and he gives them the prayer that we’ve come to call the Our Father. Perhaps prayer seemed a mystery to the disciples, too; maybe that’s what prompted their question. Luke’s version of the prayer is a bit shorter than Matthew’s (Matt. 6:9-13), but the essence is the same. Jesus offers us a prayer that truly does cover any and all situations of our lives and shows us the posture and the attitude with which we approach God. Our Father . . . how radical and wondrous that we can come to God with such intimacy and crawl up on his lap in prayer as our Abba, our Daddy. Simultaneously, we honor God and bow before our heavenly Father in complete submission and humility. We cry out that God’s Kingdom might be established in our lives and in the situations for which we pray. We ask for daily bread – not just provision for our needs but most importantly for the very presence of Christ himself in the Eucharist. Humbly, we acknowledge our sins and our need for forgiveness, and out of that deep awareness and with gratitude we exercise our will in forgiving others. We ask God’s protection from the temptation of sin and evil. What a simple and yet utterly profound and powerful way to pray! It covers all the bases!
I’ve become a convert to prayer, as well! I embrace this “Catholic” way of praying, awakened to beauty and the glory of it. Jesus’ prayer dissolves some of the shroud of mystery around prayer. Because God is Sovereign, I need not prattle on explaining every detail of my life’s situations to God and outlining my strategic plan for how I’d like God to answer me and move in my life. I can pray the Our Father knowing that the One who sees me and loves me will fill me with divine presence and work all things for my good according to God’s plan and purposes (Rom. 8:28). I have a non-Catholic Christian friend who told me that when he prays for his loved ones he simply names them before the Throne of Grace. He said, God knows better than I do what they need. What an act of humble, childlike trust. Following his example, and the “Catholic way,” I’ve begun praying like this for my loved ones and for situations that I encounter during my day, “Our Father, your Kingdom come and your will be done in ______’s life as it is in heaven.” Fill in the blank with the name of the person or the gist of the situation. I’ve grown in my ability to trust God with all the details. Not only does praying the Our Father take some of the mystery out of prayer, it also reduces the anxiety of situations in life because I can hand over the people and situations to God, confident that God does indeed will that his Kingdom come and his will be done in every aspect of our lives. This prayer also keeps the focus where it belongs – on God, and not on me and my desires.
Today, let’s pray the Our Father all throughout the day! Let’s see if we can make it more of a practice to call this prayer to mind when we recognize needs and opportunities to pray as we live our daily lives. Amen and amen!