Aug 22 Fri
Should I expect God to teach me to pray?
“Lord, teach us to pray.” We are created for prayer, for that intimate conversation with God, to walk with Him always. But we don’t know how to pray as we ought. We need to be instructed.
Implicit in the appeal of every disciple is that there’s a right way to pray – and thus a wrong one as well. Jesus has come to give us the way of prayer.
Thus, Jesus gives us the first and last word of prayer: FATHER. “When you pray, say: Father.” God, who is eternally Father, has introduced us into His Son. Our being His children is the heart of all prayer.
Prayer is, first of all, the ascent of our heart and mind to the Father’s wisdom and love.
Saint Josemaría experienced this gift of prayer when, travelling in a streetcar in Madrid, he suddenly felt a clarity about his sonship: “I had learned to call God Father, as in the Our Father, from my childhood. But feeling, seeing, being amazed at that desire of God that we are his children… that was on the street and in a streetcar. For an hour or an hour and a half, I don’t know, I had to shout Abba, Pater!”
Father, my Father! Even if we go no further than these words, spending all our time saying it with faith and love, then we have prayed well.
Our prayer ascends to the Father so that His grace will also descend to us. The word “pray” really means to ask. Indeed, prayer is associated with petition. Still, our Lord reminds us of the confidence we should have in asking, a confidence that comes only from knowing God as our Father.
In a parable about a not-very-good friend who is won over by persistence. Jesus concludes with a surprising but logical statement: “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
Our Lord introduces the gift of the Spirit. How much more will the Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?
Perhaps we don’t pray as often or as incessantly as we should because we sense that the Father has more in mind than to give us just what we ask for. He allows us to be in need so that we approach Him in our nothingness and so that He can then begin the work of His grace upon us.
The prayer of petition must contain the willingness to be changed, to receive the Spirit Who blows where He wills, the Spirit Who will lead us where we do not yet want to go. Prayer isn’t approaching the divine vending machine and requesting what we want. It’s an entrance into a relationship and conversation with the Father Who knows what we need more than we can imagine.