The one prayer that Jesus specifically taught, the Our Father, contains many reasons for praying. Jesus asks us to address God as we would a loving parent, and to honor God’s name.
Jesus encourages us to pray for “the kingdom,” the vision he has of a just and loving society and world. He says it’s okay, too, to pray for our very human needs: for bread, for food to nourish us, for food to eat and food to share. Most especially, he suggests that we ask for forgiveness of our sins, and that we might forgive others as God forgives us.
This great prayer we can say together with others or when we are alone with God, but it reminds us that all prayer is quite simply about communication, the attempt to maintain an intimate relationship with God as we would a close friend or a loving parent. Friendship and parenthood are, in fact, the metaphors Jesus uses to explain prayer in the gospel story for today. And he tells us, keep asking; keep searching; keep knocking. God will hear our prayer and will respond, often in totally unexpected ways.
- What is your relationship with God in prayer? Do you see God as a friend, a loving parent, a lover? How do you describe God to your children or grandchildren?
- What stories do you tell others of how you came to believe in God’s loving response to you?
- When has an unanswered prayer become a source of gratitude?
To pray that God’s name be hallowed and that God’s kingdom come is to acknowledge that all barriers to love must be dissolved. Anything that separates race from race, rich from poor, gender from gender, age group from age group, Christian from non-Christian is a barrier to the holiness God wishes to share with believers. Biases have no place in the community that names God our father.
Jesus also calls us in Sunday’s gospel to persevere in prayer. God is more gracious than a friend who reluctantly gets up in the night to help us. But God’s graciousness does not guarantee that we get what we think we want. We may not receive what we ask for; we may instead discover more than we were looking for or be surprised at what’s behind the door on which we are knocking.
God gives us what we need, a mystery that we see best in retrospect. Jesus calls us in Sunday’s gospel to long-range perseverance in prayer that enters into the mystery of faith.
- Are you sometimes afraid of asking God for certain things; are you unwilling to trust that, as a friend, God will hear your prayers, however unimportant they might seem?
- Who is someone with whom you are angry or hurt, holding resentments, perhaps buried for a long time? Are you open to pray for that person, open to letting go and moving on?
- Are you willing to seek forgiveness from someone with whom you are estranged?
- Are you willing in some way to bring into your life, your home, your community those who are neglected, ill-treated, marginalized, strangers?