THURSDAY JUNE 20, 2024
THURSDAY OF THE ELEVENTH WEEK OF THE ORDINARY TIME B
Sirach 48:1-14
Matthew 6:7-15
THE LORD’S PRAYER: TEACHING US THE CORE IN CHRISTIAN PRAYER
Jesus gives us in the Lord’s prayer the foundation and core in Christian prayer. He dissuades the use of many words and phrases or the making of impression or trying to convince our God by the words we address to him. Prayer is a wish, an appeal and also a discourse between us and our God primarily. It is a loving trustful dialogue and loving relationship.
Jesus goes ahead to give the content of prayers to be addressed to our God. He began by calling God, Father. He shows that God is our shelter, our provider, our sustainer, our leader and our head in the family. Fatherhood of God is one aspect that we cannot ignore. God knows us, sees us, takes care of us and guides us in life.
Away from that, our Father deserves the honour and praise due to him. So the first petition addressed to God our Father is our submissiveness, our duty to do his will, our task to promote his kingdom, our aspirations to hallow his name. We are obliged by his role as our Father to be good children of his in obedience to our Father, in submission to his will and in total abandonment of ourselves to him.
Then the petitions of asking for our needs, our daily sustenance, our food, our shelter and our protection and our wants. This is within the power of our God to supply and give us. He never abandons us, he never denied us, he never leaves us but will always provides our needs and supply our desired requests. But we must ask, we must also request those things that we think we need as at the time we need them. It shows our trust in him and establishes our dependence on him.
But again we must as well be in communion with others and promote communion with humanity by forgiving others as we are forgiven. We recognize in God that we also err and sin against our God. We admit our sinfulness and on that basis we must always seek forgiveness and administer same forgiveness to people. Our forgiving the sins of other is the basis on which our forgiveness is granted.
And finally we ask for protection against the forces of evil and darkness in this world. We need to be delivered from evil, saved from their attack and protected from their influence and this is what we ask every time we pray this prayer.
The prayer Jesus teaches is a summation of the content of all prayers we need to make in our prayers, the attitude we need to have and the disposition we must have as well.
Prayer is necessary for our lives here on earth and Jesus has given us the key and core or our prayers that God expects, that will sustain us and through which we will be blessed. Let us learn and act on it.
Heavenly Father, hear us when we come to you in our prayers, attend to us, bless us, and forgive us. May this model of prayer, you taught us and which we recite and say each day in our liturgical celebrations and private lives, bring blessings into our lives, enliven our spirit, attend to our needs, and grant us protection from the forces of darkness and all evil through Christ our Lord.
Fr Norbert Uchuno.
