17th Sunday in Ordinary Time - C

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

One of the disciples of Jesus spoke these words to him after watching him spend time in prayer, in communion, with his heavenly Father.

When we think of the deepest longings of our human hearts, our deepest needs, and desires, perhaps we might also find ourselves saying, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

The request, “teach us to pray,” is not so much a desire to know how to pray.

From our the time of our childhood we have been taught how to pray, beginning with prayers such as the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, the prayer to our guardian angels, our grace before meals.

From of the time of our childhood, we have also grown accustomed to praying in our own words, naming the people we are asking God to bless, mentioning specific needs in our prayers, thanking God, complaining to God, imploring God, begging God, even bargaining with God in our prayers just as we saw Abraham bargaining with God in our first reading.

As we grow older, and maybe presume we are more sophisticated in our prayer, we acknowledge that prayer is not only asking God for what we want or need, we come to understand prayer as worship, thanksgiving, adoration, petition, intercession, and very often contrition.

Prayer is public prayer – the liturgy of the Church, Mass, the Eucharist, and the sacraments.

Prayer is devotional prayer – the rosary, stations of the Cross, novenas, and litanies.

Prayer is private prayer – reading the Bible, meditation, daily devotionals, spiritual reading, even the very simple but powerful recollection of the presence of God in the most ordinary events of our daily lives.

All of here now how to pray – and in a variety of ways.

But each one of us could also make our own the words of the disciple of Jesus and say ourselves, “Lord, teach us to pray,” because that request is not to know a method, but rather to know the fruit of the prayer Jesus experienced which is a communion of mind and heart with God our heavenly Father.

“Lord, teach us to pray.” These words reflect the same sentiment that St. Augustine expressed when he wrote in the fourth century that we were all made for God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

In our liturgy, let us find rest for our hearts in the Word of God that teaches us that we share the same longing as the disciples did – the longing to pray as Jesus did and to know the communion of love with our heavenly Father that he knew in his prayer.

Let us find rest in our hearts when we come forward to receive Holy Communion, to receive in our hands, on our tongues, in our hearts the love that Jesus revealed in his life, his suffering, his death, and his resurrection from the dead.

And let us find rest on the Lord's Day, a day of rest, and every day throughout this coming week, as we find in the variety of ways we pray, the answer to our prayer – an awareness of the loving presence, the communion of mind and heart, that are the gifts of God whose peace alone will satisfy the restless longings of our hearts.

Thomas P. Ferguson
July 29, 2007