11 March, Tuesday — How to pray

Tuesday of the 1^st Week of Lent

Isa 55:10-11
Mt 6:7-15

“…do not babble as the pagans do…”

On the back of yesterday’s Gospel focusing on almsgiving, one of the three pillars of Lent, today’s Gospel touches on prayer. It is safe to assume that many know the importance of prayer in the life of a Christian. When I was little, I would be asked before going to bed, if I had said my prayers. It was on the checklist of things to do, alongside brushing of teeth and changing into pyjamas before I was ready for bed. As I got older, I moved thankfully from saying prayers to actually praying. What a big difference between the two! Instead of rattling off prayers by rote and mechanically, without engaging the heart or the senses in any meaningful way, I entered a whole new world of prayer. I learned to pray spontaneously, speaking to the Lord as I would to a friend. The words slipped off my lips effortlessly, and there was a new intimacy that grew over time. It changed my relationship with God — I felt heard, and I felt I really meant it when I called him ‘Father’. 

Of course, prayer times were not always fruitful – and it was in those times of dryness that I often resorted either to prolonged silence or, if I was really distracted, or in crisis and couldn’t find the words, the prayers that I clung on to were the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. Jesus taught that it’s not the length of prayer that counts – God’s heart is moved by sincerity and intention of the heart, not the length of a prayer. My prayer does not inform God, who already knows what I need, even if I don’t. Instead, prayer forms me and helps me grow in self-awareness. I come to know who God is, my own place and who I am before Him. 

The first three lines of the Lord’s Prayer focusses on God himself. We pray that God’s kingdom will come or, expressed another way, that God’s will be done. This was also the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. In this season of Lent, as we attempt to die to self – to pride, ego and sin, praying just these few lines can take one very deeply into confronting the areas of our lives that require a real and fresh surrender of everything (especially what matters most to us), to God’s will. 

Only after we place God first, does the prayer shift to our needs  – our daily bread, our sins and deliverance from evil. I am struck by how the prayer is actually communal in nature, with the use of ‘our’ and not ‘my’, tying back to how the prayer opens, with us acknowledging God as “Our Father”.   We bring to God our prayers not just for ourselves, but for everyone else out there. We pray for forgiveness of our sins, to be protected from temptations and the evil one. In this second half, what convicts me most is that which ties God’s forgiveness of my sins with my forgiveness of others’ offenses against me. Ouch!! Such a hard expectation to live up to; yet Jesus himself has set the example by laying his life for everyone, and then asking His Father for mercy on his enemies, excusing them on the basis of their ignorance. Such is the expansiveness and deep generosity of God’s love, expressed through Jesus, for all of humanity.

The Lord’s Prayer is also one prayer that is common to, and prayed by, most Christian denominations; and an important reminder of what unites us, than what sets us apart; we are more connected than we realise, because we are all children of the same Father. May we turn to our Lord with all our hearts this Lent, to learn not just to pray from our centre, but to live our lives as prayer and a fragrant offering back to Him who gave us His only Son, just so we might have a chance at life eternal with our Father in heaven. 

(Today’s OXYGEN by Corinne Cheok)

Prayer: Teach us Lord, not just how to pray, but also to listen to what You might have to say in response. Amen.

Thanksgiving: Thank you Lord, for the Holy Spirit who prays in us, and for our blessed Mother, and the communion of saints who pray for us. Thank you for answered prayers and for giving us precious insights when your answer is ‘No’, or ‘Not yet’. Amen.