Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
As someone who works for the Church and has been involved in Church-related activities for a long time, sometimes I just forget how the world outside of the Church works. Specifically, I remember sitting in my office one day, preparing for a staff meeting, and asking myself “How do people start and end meetings or events without a prayer?” I couldn’t fathom a world where you bring people together for something and don’t begin by praying, usually about the meeting! (In my case, that prayer is often a plea that the meeting will be short)
Often, when beginning and closing meetings, I will ask if anyone would like to lead us in prayer. This is the easiest way to make a group of teenagers silent. Some days, I let them off the hook and volunteer myself. Other days, I sit in the silence until one of them is so uncomfortable they finally step up and do it. Every day, I assume that their silence is the result of a fear that they are going to “say the wrong thing” when they pray.
You may know this feeling yourself. You’re asked to lead a prayer, and you stumble your way through, worried you’re about to say something foolish or incorrect. Plenty of people have come up with different pneumonics and tricks to help with “spontaneous prayer,” but the discomfort is always the same – I have no idea if what I’m saying is the right thing to say. Communicating with God is never as stressful as when we try to speak for an entire group.
Conveniently, in today’s Gospel (Matthew 6: 7-15), Jesus teaches us how to pray. He teaches us the “Our Father,” the prayer we pray every time we go to Mass. Along with the Hail Mary, the Our Father is one of the first prayers we are taught by the Church, and often a prayer that you can rely on every Catholic being able to recite. For myself, it’s the time in Mass that I am the most likely to zone out – I’ve been saying the Our Father since I was five, I can definitely rattle it off without even thinking about it (and usually do).
How often do we sit down and genuinely pray the Our Father, instead of mindlessly reciting it? How often do we really consider the prayer we are saying, instead of trusting that it’s a “safe” prayer that everyone knows? If Jesus teaches us that this is how we should pray, how often do we sincerely meet that teaching?
Today, let us remember that we do not need to “babble like the Pagans” (Matthew 6:7). Let us alleviate ourselves of the fear that we “don’t know the right thing to say” when we pray. Jesus tells us exactly how to pray, so let us embrace that prayer, seek to understand what it means, and take it to heart
- Marty Bagatti