Lord, Teach Us To Pray

"Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples." (Lk 11:1). Yesterday a senior boy asked me a similar question: "How can I pray and get closer to Jesus?" I was thrilled, for that's exactly what we are about at Central Catholic: "making Jesus known and loved". It is a profound question, one that comes from the depths of a hungry heart, one that all of us should be asking. Jesus answered with the "Our Father", a prayer which, when prayed from the heart, touches all the bases: our relationship to God as our father, yet at the same time, a recognition of his sovereignty and the need for us to surrender our will to his. We acknowledge a healthy dependency on him for all we need, including our daily bread, and we pray for the strength to forgive as well as avoid temptation and be delivered from all evil. Taking each one of these elements and expressing them in our own words, as we would to our best friend, might make this familiar prayer, so often recited by rote, a means of real communication with God. Our faith teaches us that our prayers are heard, and often enough we receive confirmation of this when our prayers are answered. Let us never grow weary of praying. Even the petition, Lord, teach me to pray, is an excellent prayer. May we repeat it often today so that it becomes part of our daily prayers: a good way to START our prayer!
Bro. Rene