OT XVII [C] Gn 18:20-32, Col  2:12-14, Lk 11:1-13 

 

We are all probably aware of the influence for good or ill we can have on other people and other people can have on us. Some people can bring out the best in us, and others can bring out the worst in us. We all need the good living of others to help us to live well, and others need our good living if they are to live well.

During his public ministry, Jesus’ disciples were deeply influenced by the way he lived, his vision for human life, and his relationship with God. They wanted to follow him, to become like him. They noticed, for example, how Jesus prayed to God. He seemed to have a very intimate relationship with God. They wanted a share of that relationship. They wanted to pray to God as he did. So, they requested him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray’.

In teaching the Lord’s prayer, Jesus was not only teaching them a prayer, but also the approach they should have in their prayers. Jesus first invites us to address God in the same intimate way as he did, as ‘Abba, Father’ and he empowers us to do so by sending us the Holy Spirit. As Paul writes to the Galatians, ‘God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba, Father!”’ (Gal 4:6).

Jesus then teaches us that our primary focus in prayer is to be on God rather than on ourselves. After praying to have God’s name glorified and for the coming of God’s kingdom to be established on earth, we pray for our own needs and those of others. We should be persevering just like Abraham was in his prayer to intercede for the good people in the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, or like the man who went to his neighbour’s house at night to ask bread to feed his visiting guest.

I am sure we have all had the experience of asking God for something important in prayer and not getting the response we had hoped for. We end up with the feeling that the Lord isn’t listening to us. We might ask that a loved one recover from a serious illness, but it doesn’t happen. At that point, we might find ourselves praying the prayer that Jesus prayed from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

Saint Paul, in one of his letters, tells us that he had prayed for something but was not answered in the way he hoped for. He had what he calls a ‘thorn in the flesh’. He never fully explains what this ‘thorn in the flesh’ is, but it was clearly something that caused him a lot of distress, and he wanted to be rid of it.

Though his ‘thorn in the flesh’ didn’t leave him, his prayer did not go completely unanswered. He heard the Lord say to him in prayer, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’

Prayers that don’t seem to be answered are often being answered in ways that we very often don’t see at the time. If we keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, the Lord will respond to our prayers in ways that will surprise us. What we ask the Lord to change may not change, but we will be changed for the better. Sometimes, the Lord answers our prayers not by changing the situation outside ourselves but by changing ourselves, changing our hearts and minds. We might receive the grace of acceptance, the gift of a deep peace; we might be helped to see the situation in a way we never saw it before. Very often, God will give us even more than we ask for. At the end of today’s gospel reading, Jesus says, ‘how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him’. Jesus is saying that if we come before God in our need, asking him for help, he will share the life of the Spirit with us.

A certain lady who spent her time working for the Lord – visiting the sick and the bedridden, helping the elderly and the handicapped – was diagnosed with a knee problem needing surgery. The surgery, unfortunately, was not a success, and so left her in constant pain and unable to walk. It seemed that the Lord had ignored the prayers of this woman and her friends for a successful surgery. This was a woman who considered herself a personal friend of Jesus. She was utterly disappointed, and her cheerful disposition turned into sadness and gloom. One day, she pulled herself together and shared with her confessor what was going on in her soul. The confessor suggested that she go into prayer and ask her friend Jesus why he has treated her this way. And she did. The following day, the priest met her and saw peace written all over her face in spite of her pain. “Do you know what he said to me?” she began, “As I was looking at the crucified Jesus and telling him about my bad knee, he said to me, ‘Mine is worse.’” She was given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

 

The prayer of intercession that we have after the creed has a strong foundation in the prayer of Abraham in today’s first reading. He was praying not for his family, but for the people he did not even know. In the prayer Our Father, too, we do not pray Give me this day my daily bread, but Give US this day our daily bread. We pray these petitions not as individuals but as a community. The vision of Jesus in this prayer extends beyond the community of believers. As a community of faith, we pray this prayer in the world, as part of the world, on behalf of the world. So, when we pray, ‘give us this day our daily bread’, we are asking God to satisfy the physical hungers and spiritual hungers of all humanity. Just for your information, it is only the Christians who pray for non-Christians and for the rest of humanity. The Muslims even call upon Allah to curse the Jews and Christians in their daily prayers. In our petitions, we usually include prayers for the whole world and our nation, besides praying for the universal and local churches. In our Good Friday prayer, we have special petitions for Jews, Muslims, Hindus and people of all other religions. This should open our minds to see that we have the true God who is the creator of all the world and redeemed the whole world and is concerned not just with Christians but with the whole of humanity, which is His creation. In this prayer Lord’s prayer, Jesus urges us to see that we stand not as I, as an individual, but we as a community placed on a lampstand giving light to the rest of humanity, giving out rays of truth, love and peace. Today, when we pray the Our Father prayer, let’s have these thoughts in our minds.