The readings for Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time may be found at:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072422.cfm
When we want to learn something, where do we go?
Do we ask Siri, Google, Alexa or our friends?
Do we learn it on TikTok, like I keep hearing everywhere?
Do we read a book? I see some eyes rolling, you know who you are.
Imagine we want to learn how to pray. Where would we go?
In this passage from Saint Luke, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray.
Now these 12 disciples had already been with Jesus for about 2 years.
And in that time, they had seen Jesus bring a dead person back to life, they saw Him calm a huge storm using only words and they even saw Him feed over 5,000 people with 5 regular loaves of bread and 2 fish.
Try learning how to do that on TikTok.
And as far as we know, the disciples never came asking, “Lord, the way you calmed that storm was awesome, teach us how to do that.”
We never heard them say, “Feeding 5,000 people could come in pretty handy in a pinch, can you show us how to do that?”
No. Of all the important things they had seen Jesus do, the disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray.
Now Jesus prayed all the time. Maybe they noticed that if Jesus needed to pray so regularly, how much more did they need to pray?
The good news is that prayer is a discipline that can be learned.
So we pray because Jesus prayed.
And Jesus gives us a model prayer and expects that we will pray.
We pray because we need to know God.
Jesus wants to show us who God is and what God is like.
Jesus also makes prayer intimate. We call God, Father because Jesus did.
We pray because Jesus wants us to be close to Him and oriented towards heaven.
Given how hot it is today, I’m sure few of us could tolerate Hell very well.
We pray to focus on God and what He calls us to.
We pray because we trust God to provide what we need.
We pray because we need to forgive and be forgiven.
This also means we need to be honest about our sin and to repent regularly with a sacramental confession.
We pray because we need help dealing with temptations and testing.
Every day we need God’s help to live the way He wants us to.
But we all pray, right?
I mean, we say The Our Father, The Hail Mary, The Glory Be.
We say them the same way we have since we were eight years old.
But imagine how our relationships in life would be if we treated them the same way we did when we were eight years old or all we said and did were the same rushed words over and over again for the rest of our lives.
We’d probably end up alone.
So we need to pray more, but also be more intentional in our prayer.
Does this mean that we are all praying rosaries every day and the Liturgy of The Hours and the Angelus?
Maybe. But what are some simple ways we can pray more in our daily lives?
Try throwing in an “Amen” into conversation every once in a while.
Try saying “Thank you, Jesus” whenever something good happens.
Pray before and after meals, especially in public - maybe it’ll show someone else that it’s ok to do it too.
Maybe it’s making the Sign of the Cross whenever you pass by a Catholic Church because you know Jesus is present in the tabernacle.
Meet a friend for a prayer date and pray with one another.
Scroll through the contacts on your phone and pray for each name you come across, especially the ones you may feel the urge to scroll past.
When you’re bored, rather than looking for a distraction, find a quiet place, sit in silence and listen for the voice of God.
Offer your day for a specific intention, for a loved one, friend, or stranger.
There are lots of ways to pray.
And each one of them brings us closer to God.
What makes prayer good is not using this method or that, but praying in a way that expresses our faith, humble hope and real desire for closeness with God.
This week, let us ask Jesus to be better followers of Him and to join Him in more intentionally making our lives, lives filled with prayer.
