Posted by The WORD in other words (2018) by Fr Ernesto Lagura SVD – University of San Carlos, Cebu City
Tuesday 1st Week of Lent
Verbosity does not make our prayer more effective. After all “your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Mt. 6:8). Supplication is not the only kind of prayer.
The first part of the “Our Father” is not a petition but a praise to God, a loving Father, glorifying His holy name. With the Holy Spirit within us, we address Him as our Father for we came from Him, we belong to Him and we will eventually return to Him face to face when our earthly life is over. God is not “my Father” or “your Father” or “their Father.” He is OUR Father – the Father of us all.
The second part of the prayer reminds us that God guides, protects, and takes care of us in our temporal needs (“give us this day our daily bread”), and the spiritual life as well (“forgive us our sins … and lead us not into temptation…deliver us from evil”).
We need to pray even if God already knows our needs and problems because we must remind ourselves, in and through prayer, that without Him we can go nothing at all. We need Him and are dependent on Him. We ask Him to enable us to accept His will even if sometimes we may not understand why things happen to us. God writes straight in crooked lines.
Jesus says there is only one commandment – to love. We must love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves. Communication is the language of love. Our communication with God is what we call “prayer.” Then praying should be a delightful experience and never an ordeal. As the saying goes: “Ubiamor, non laboratur; autsilaboratur, labor amatur.” Where there is love, there is no labor but delight.
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