The Lord's Prayer

I like “how to” videos: How to sew on a button, how to char broccoli, even how to train your dragon. Our Readings this Sunday teaches us how to get out prayer problems.

1). How to pray for the guilty--like Abraham in our First Reading—

The general principle is that even one innocent person is enough to save the whole sinful city. Although praying for the sinful majority is an Old Testament idea, and also found in other ancient cultures, it is still a valid concept for Christians. God teaches Abraham about divine mercy, and so us too. God’s intent can be changed by intercession.

For example, in Diary of St. Faustina we read: [Souls who love Me dearly] will be a marvel to Angels and men. Their number is very small. They are a defense for the world before the justice of the Heavenly Father and a means of obtaining mercy for the world. The love and sacrifice of these souls sustain the world in existence….” (Diary, 367).

In our First Reading, Abraham is bargaining with God. God is not an abstract entity but a kind of dialogue partner.

The view that the innocent effect salvation for the wicked is found also in Jeremiah 5:1, Isaiah 53, in the New Testament, and through Our Lady of Fatima.

2. The problem of not wanting to pray when tempted or when you have already started down the wrong path—

Speak to God very simply—calling God Father is expressive of family intimacy and emotional closeness; there is understanding as a father understands the requests of his own child.

God will not give something similar looking but which is a source of evil. Fisherman back then baited their hooks with small fish but sometimes caught water serpents or snakes instead of larger fish, and when large scorpions have their claws and tail rolled up it is said to resemble an egg.

“Evil as you are” not is not an accusation, but a generalization based on human experience; it stresses humanity’s vulnerability.God waits for us in the night. It is during our dark hours that we often find it most difficult to seek God. He waits up for us, worries about us, and is eager to respond with mercy. Like a parent, God stays at the door through the night, anticipating our return and our embrace. Mercy is our daily bread. God offers us mercy daily, at every moment, right now, and we need it. He knows that daily we struggle with fear, anxiety, self-hate, sin, and shame. Each moment God wants to offer us his mercy and help. God does not tire of forgiving us; only we tire of asking for forgiveness.

3. 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.”

The early Christians replaced “your kingdom come” with “Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us.” They understood that the coming of the Kingdom entails the end-time cleansing of the Holy Spirit, which is related to Ezekiel 36 (see Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor).

4) How to not futurize-- Daily bread comes from the verb which means “to survive. We are to ask only for what God has apportioned to us, for what is ‘coming to us’, and so is ‘ours’, by his liberality and grace, and which will be sufficient ‘for the day’.

HOLINESS IN THE PRESENT MOMENT, as per Brother Lawrence, “The Practice of the Presence of God.”

A wise person was once asked, “What makes a person holy?” The wise person replied, “Every hour is divided into a certain number of seconds and every second into a certain number of fractions. Anyone who is able to be totally present in each fraction of a second is holy.”

The Japanese warrior was captured and thrown into prison. At night he could not sleep for he was convinced he would be tortured next morning.

Then the words of his Master came to him: “Tomorrow is not real. The only reality is now. ”

So he came to the present — and fell asleep.

The person over whom the Future has Lost its grip: How like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. No anxieties for the morrow. Total presence in the now. Holiness!