Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 11,1-13.
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.”
And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,
for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’
and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’
I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.
And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?
Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?
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?”
We are family
1. LONGING. We long to Belong- Our very desire to pray, expressed in the disciples’ request for Jesus to teach them how to pray, reveals the innate need and our deepest longing, the eternal ache of our human heart. What is this holy longing exactly? This insatiable yearning for something more; that calls us out of ourselves? It is the infinite desire to experience the infinite love of God that God himself has placed in every heart. In a word it is the eternal desire to love eternally the eternal one. This is the longing what we seek in every relationship of love which seeks to guide us and draw us toward Him. Prayer then is the cry of our human hearts to belong completely to Him and thus fulfill our immortal destiny to participate in that divine love of God. This is our one great hope, to enter as a child into a family bond of eternal loving union with God the Father.
2. FATHER. The one thing the disciples certainly would not have missed was the almost unheard of way Jesus addresses God -in calling Him His “Father.” The Aramaic word is Abba, a word which for the Jews expressed a very personal and almost too intimate way of addressing God, something like calling God “Papa” or “Dad” but not exactly. Jesus prayed like no other Jew before Him, shattering all formality and praying as one who truly knew God in a familial way. Jesus came not only to reveal who our true Father was but also to reveal us to ourselves. Jesus knew and trusted God as His real Father and invites us to call God our heavenly Father and so claim the truth of who we really are- we are family and thus true children of God as brothers and sisters to one another. He instills the confidence in us to call out to God, the mystery which grounds all of reality, as our loving Father who showed His love by adopting us into His family by means of giving us His own Son so that we could be His sons and daughters. That great God is truly our heavenly Father, to whom all fathers are a sign. Praying to God as our Father—is the starting point of real prayer.
3. MERCY. Like Jesus, we too are meant to love God and each other as God loves, giving ourselves away in self emptying love. Jesus himself reveals to us, through His words and especially by His actions that this path leads us through the cross, by way of self sacrificial love. In calling us to lay down our lives for each other and forgive those who trespass against us, he teaches us that merciful love is the greatest means of imitating God and manifesting the infinite love we all long for which conquers even death. Let us pray to our Father to fill our hearts with the daily bread of mercy so that we may be empowered to love God and each other with his infinite love as one family.
MAY God bless you in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen
Always remember Heaven is our goal
