Jesus teaches us to pray

6.         We cannot separate the teaching of Jesus about prayer from his example. His words have always to be seen and read in relation to his life, death and resurrection. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, the reason why the disciples asked the Lord to teach them to pray was his personal practice of prayer. It was a question of identity: Whoever wanted to belong to Jesus had somehow to learn his language, his way of prayer. What we call “the Lord’s prayer” is precisely the divine language Jesus has taught us, and which gives us the identity of adopted children of God and as adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus. The prayer is rooted in Jesus’ own identity as the “only Son who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18). Actually, the Son can be understood only with the help of the Father: “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to little children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do” (Matthew 11:25-26).

7.         Before teaching the disciples the “Our Father” Jesus speaks to them about a few basic conditions for authentic prayer: “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:5-8). Is it not still a temptation even for us Christians to make a lot of words, to shout and to babble? Jesus wants the prayer of his disciples to be humble and discreet, far away from every religious show business and self-exhibition.

8.         Obedient to the word of Jesus, Saint Cyprian of Jerusalem, a Father of the Church, taught his people as follows (Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer, N. 5): “Let our speech and our petition be kept under discipline when we pray, and let us preserve quietness and modesty – for, remember, we are standing in God’s sight. We must please God’s eyes both with the movements of our body and with the way we use our voices. For just as a shameless man will be noisy with his cries, so it is fitting for the modest to pray in a moderate way. Furthermore, the Lord has taught us to pray in secret, in hidden and remote places, in our own bed-chambers – and this is most suitable for faith, since it shows us that God is everywhere and hears and sees everything, and in the fullness of his majesty is present even in hidden and secret places, as it is written ‘I am a God close at hand and not a God far off. If a man hides himself in secret places, will I not see him? Do I not fill the whole of heaven and earth?’, and, again, ‘The eyes of God are everywhere, they see good and evil alike’. When we meet together with the brethren in one place, and celebrate divine sacrifices with God’s priest, we should remember our modesty and discipline, not to broadcast our prayers at the tops of our voices, nor to throw before God, with undisciplined long-windedness, a petition that would be better made with more modesty: for after all God does not listen to the voice but to the heart, and he who sees our thoughts should not be pestered by our voices, as the Lord proves when he says: ‘Why do you think evil in your hearts?’ – or, again, ‘All the churches shall know that it is I who test your motives and your thoughts’.”

Would it not be a good thing to read this text from time to time in some of our churches and in some of our prayer groups and to ask ourselves if we are still conformed to the word of Jesus?

9.         In the “Our Father” Jesus is sharing with us the secret of his being Son of the Father: “Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). Jesus, the Lord, as our elder brother is taking us by the hand and leading us to the place where we have the courage to say: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:10-13). We can do it because the Holy Spirit himself is pronouncing on the depth of our heart “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). We pray the words in solidarity with all the other adopted children of God. God is not simply “my Father” but “our Father”. We should not pray first of all for our daily needs but that God may always have the first place. Only when we give God the whole space “on earth as in heaven”, especially our own heart, only then we can proceed to our needs: the daily bread that means everything that makes us alive; reconciliation with the others and with God; the grace not to be tested to the point that we cannot survive.

10.       The “Our Father” is an eminent social prayer. Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (79) has a wonderful passage related also to the Lord’s prayer: “Development needs Christians with their arms raised towards Godin prayer, Christians moved by the knowledge that truth-filled love, from which authentic development proceeds, is not produced by us, but given to us. For this reason, even in the most difficult and complex times, besides recognizing what is happening, we must above all else turn to God's love. Development requires attention to the spiritual life, a serious consideration of the experiences of trust in God, spiritual fellowship in Christ, reliance upon God's providence and mercy, love and forgiveness, self-denial, acceptance of others, justice and peace. All this is essential if ‘hearts of stone’ are to be transformed into ‘hearts of flesh’ (Ezek 36:26), rendering life on earth ‘divine’ and thus more worthy of humanity. All this is of man, because man is the subject of his own existence; and at the same time it is of God, because God is at the beginning and end of all that is good, all that leads to salvation: ‘the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's’ (1 Cor 3:22-23). Christians long for the entire human family to call upon God as ‘Our Father!’ In union with the only-begotten Son, may all people learn to pray to the Father and to ask him, in the words that Jesus himself taught us, for the grace to glorify him by living according to his will, to receive the daily bread that we need, to be understanding and generous towards our debtors, not to be tempted beyond our limits, and to be delivered from evil (cf. Mt 6:9-13)”.