Good morning. In yesterday’s Gospel, Jesus gives us the perfect prayer - the “Our Father” or the “Lord’s Prayer”. We pray the Our Father prayer at Mass and when we pray the Holy Rosary. It is a prayer that reminds us that we are adopted sons and daughters of God, who we call upon as Father, and coheirs of the kingdom of heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ. As I mentioned in my homily yesterday, the Lord’s Prayer is an invitation for us to enter into communion with the Holy Trinity through the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, namely Baptism, Eucharist, and Reconciliation.
Bishop Robert Barron wrote that “prayer is intimate communion and conversation with God.” This is the intimacy, the friendship that our Lord spoke of in today’s Gospel when he said, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship. . .” As baptized Christians, Jesus calls us “friends” because, in prayer, Jesus tells us “everything [he has] heard from [his] Father. . . and whatever [we] ask the Father in [Jesus’ name] he may give [us]” (John 15:15-16). This is the intimate, loving relationship that we can have with our Father in heaven through prayer.
However, as we heard in today’s Gospel, we must be persistent. Jesus tells us, “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. . . 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?” Bishop Robert Barron had this to say about persistence in our prayer life: “You also have to pray with persistence. One reason that we don’t receive what we want through prayer is that we give up too easily. Augustine said that God sometimes delays in giving us what we want because he wants our hearts to expand to be able to receive it.”
Moreover, Thomas Merton tells us that “Jesus always reminds us to ask, in order that we may receive. The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet he is the one gift which the Father gives most easily. . . the Holy Spirit will never be refused. ‘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?’” And so, my sisters and brothers in Christ, let us be persistent in our prayer life and trust that God will answer our prayers in His time and according to His will. As the Lord tells us in today’s first reading: “for you who fear my name, there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays.” Our healing starts with prayer and ends with “Jesus, I trust in you.”
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