There is an old story of a man who needed to send a letter from his remote camp to the neighboring village, so he asked his son to make the trip. The son had never traveled to the village on his own. He looked at the trail ahead of him and said, “I’ll go, Dad, but I don’t see how that path will ever reach the village.”
The Father pointed toward the horizon. “Do you see the trail as far as the big tree down there?”
“Yes, I can see it that far.”
“When you get to that tree, you’ll see the trail a little farther ahead. Just keep walking and you’ll see the next leg of the trail. Just keep following what you see, and you’ll be in the village before you know it.”
When one of the disciples, in our Gospel today, said "Lord, teach us to pray,” the Greek word for prayer proseuche, which means closeness, an intimate, face-to-face of surrendering of our lives to God.
In the Our Father Prayer, we are trusting that there is a trail ahead, even if we can’t see it. Jesus is teaching us to trust God’s will in all things. Wherever God’s will is obeyed, there God reigns, and His authority is acknowledged. That is the Kingdom on earth in you!
The opposite is witchcraft. One woman who was delivered from practicing witchcraft by Catholic exorcism prayers said that, nevertheless, when praying for someone she sometimes would send her own “healing energy” directly at the person rather than asking God to help them. And, when she was worried about someone or something, she might try to “visualize” the answer to the worry, trying to divine what will happen in the future, rather than asking God to take care of it. She then said, “I realized I am still trying to control situations. I realized that I have an issue with real trust in the Lord.”
That woman, although delivered, is not alone. We have archeological evidence that some ancient Jews also disobeyed the First Commandant by having recourse to magic or superstition also. For example, many wore an amulet with the stated purpose of to attract people to them, or to prevent against curses, or they wore an amulet around their neck to give the wearer charm and grace and to prevent them from speaking evil to a certain person.
The Evil One offers us an easier life, but that fellowship offers no blessings but is consumed with ego, power, vanity, wealth, and pleasure, leading ultimately to emptiness and alienation from God and eternal life.
St. Therese of Lisieux, from her cloistered convent, prayed for great sinners such as men on death row, missionaries, priests, and atheists, as she interceded for them and offered up personal sacrifices for them to God. She said, "How great is the power of prayer! One could call it a Queen who has at each instant free access to the King who is able to obtain whatever she asks” (Story of a Soul).
Persistence is important.
In Luke 11 verse 8, we hear: “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.”
The literal meaning is actually a “shameless Persistence and audacity.”
People back then lived in a one room house which meant, at night, his floor was probably full of sleeping family members. To get up to get the bread, he would have to awaken the entire household, which would probably disturb the entire neighborhood. Jesus tells us that if you won’t get what you need from your friend because of friendship, you can get it because you are asking boldly, with the expectation of getting the results you anticipate.
Hebrews 4:16 says: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence (boldness), so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
e.g., In our First Reading, Abraham, praying for the sinful majority, talked God down to save as many citizens in Sodom as possible. It shows that God’s intent can be changed by intercession. Abraham did not simply say, “God’s plan is God’s plan and there is nothing I can do about it.”
As Scripture reveals in subsequent verses, it turns out that there weren’t even ten righteous people in Sodom and so it was destroyed, but thanks to Abraham, Lot and most of his family were saved.
Jesus also asks us, “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?” Fishermen back then used live bait, and sometimes would catch a snake or serpent instead of a fish and when large scorpions have their claws and tails rolled up it is said to resemble an egg.
The problem is that sometimes we ask for serpents with our “hands” even we pray something different with our mouth-- “you get what your hand calls for.” James 4:3 says, “You ask and don't receive because you ask wrongly, so that you may spend it on your desires for pleasure.”
A good prayer for ourselves to remedy this is to ask God for the grace to tame our disorderly drives and desires because these make it hard to sense the gentle invitation of grace. Grace is gentle because it respects our freedom; disorderly drives do not.
Don’t make the mistake that its somehow selfish to pray for your own needs— DO pray for your own needs. E.g., Father Faber wrote this classic letter to someone contemplating religious life— “If you wish not to lose your vocation, you must pray daily to God to give you the gift of virginity, that you may preserve the virginal innocence which He has of His mercy not allowed the devil to rob you of. God gives nothing, much less His chief gifts, unless we ask often, and keep asking.”
Lastly, we pray in the Our Father, “Give us today our daily bread” with emphasis on “daily,” by trying to live in the “sacrament of the present moment.”
E.g., There was a city man who went to the country and watched a farmer sawing a log with long, even, measured strokes. This city fellow said, “Here, let me try sawing the log.” He also started sawing with slow, measured strokes, but before long he accelerated the tempo. After a few moments of frantic sawing, the stroke went crooked, and the saw got stuck in the log.
The city man said, “I guess I didn’t do so well, after all.” The farmer replied, “It’s because you allowed your mind to get ahead of the saw.”
A professional athlete said, “When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. When you focus on the future, it’s my pride. I try to focus in the present. That’s humility. [Giannis Antetokounmpo]
There is a Latin saying, “age quod agis”--do what you are doing, concentrate on the present.
Amen.
