Wednesday Week 27 Ordinary Time, Josephinum 6th Oct 2021
Lk 11:1-4
I want to reflect on the request of the disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray”.
I want to start by noting that there is something amazingly beautiful about seeing a man in love.
First, to see a man in love with his new wife, or his young pregnant wife:.
- A man whose eyes follow her,
- A man whose thoughts are obviously concerned for her,
- A man who is clearly not just caught up in himself, but is thinking about HER.
It’s a beautiful sight.
It’s a manly sight.
Second, a man in love with God.
To see a man, a young man, caught up with God, is a beautiful sight.
- To see him in chapel, gazing at the tabernacle.
- To see him reading his Bible, caught up with the God he is discovering.
- To see him, to hear him, confess and repent, because he loves and he wants to love MORE.
- To see him excited to know more, learn more, LOVE God more.
It’s a beautiful sight.
It’s a manly sight.
We’re made to give ourselves away, we’re made for self-gift,
And to see man live that out is an amazing sight.
Back to our Gospel text.
It’s seems to me that when the disciples looked at their Lord
They saw a man in love.
They saw Him rose early to go and pray alone
They saw Him seek to leave the crowd, to be alone in prayer
They HEARD Him speak of God,
With an intimacy
With a love
They saw Him pray
They saw a man in love
And it must have been an even more amazing sight than the sight of men in love that you and I have seen.
And, small surprise, they said,
“Lord, teach us to pray”.
To ask the Lord Jesus to “teach us to pray”,
Is to ask Him to introduce us into the heart of His relationship with the FATHER
it’s no small thing that He responds
by teaching them a prayer that starts,
“Our Father…”
(Pause).
Shifting focus.
There never comes a time when we no longer need to LEARN how to pray.
One of my own annual formation goals this year is
To improve the quality of my mental prayer
To have my time with HIM
Not just be vegging-out in the chapel
Not just sitting in distractions
But being intimate with Him
Because I am still learning how to pray,
after 22 years a priest
after 30 years with a committed daily schedule of mental prayer or meditation
I’ve been attending the prayer laboratories
I’ve been reading and re-reading books on method in mental prayer
Because I want the wisdom of the saints
Methods of the saints
I want to share with you my favourite short summary of such methods, such techniques against distraction etc
25 copies here
We ALL still need to learn how to pray
The disciples saw in the Lord Jesus a man in love
A man who was not just a man
A man whose love was the inter-personal love of the Trinity somehow visible on earth
Let’s hear those words of the disciples, their request, and make it our own:
“Lord, teach us to pray”.
