Sunday Meditation: Teach Us To Pray

For the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time in Year C, Jesus and the Apostles resume their journey to Jerusalem.  As Fr. Geoffrey Plant points out in his homily below, the journey to Jerusalem, which makes up a good deal of the three synoptic Gospels, is signaled in Luke’s Gospel by the verse, “When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51).  What we see along the journey is Jesus’ instruction on discipleship.  In today’s passage, one of the disciples—unfortunately he is unnamed—asked Jesus on how to pray.

 

 

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,

one of his disciples said to him,

"Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."

He said to them, "When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread

and forgive us our sins

for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,

and do not subject us to the final test."

 

And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend

to whom he goes at midnight and says,

'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,

for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey

and I have nothing to offer him,'

and he says in reply from within,

'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked

and my children and I are already in bed.

I cannot get up to give you anything.'

I tell you,

if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves

because of their friendship,

he will get up to give him whatever he needs

because of his persistence.

 

"And I tell you, ask and you will receive;

seek and you will find;

knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks, receives;

and the one who seeks, finds;

and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

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?

If you then, who are wicked,

know how to give good gifts to your children,

how much more will the Father in heaven

give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"   

~Lk 11:1-11

 

Fr. Geoffrey provides the context for the Lord’s Prayer in his homily and then goes into a detailed comparison of Luke’s version with the more familiar Matthew’s version.

I did not realize that the Matthew’s version of The Lord’s Prayer is not in the Sunday Lectionary, only in a weekday Mass.  I think that is a mistake.  We should all be reminded that we are all one family under our Abba on a Sunday Mass.

For the pastoral sermon, Fr. Patrick Briscoe O/P. who has been doing a series of homilies on the life of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati who will be canonized in early September, combines the theme of today’s Gospel with Blessed Pier Giorgio.

 

It is still persistence in prayer if you have to go through a holy intercessor.  Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati pray for us.

 

Sunday Meditation: “He will get up to give him whatever he needs

because of his persistence.”

 

For today’s hymn, what could be more appropriate than The Lord’s Prayer?

 

You cannot get any closer to beauty and heaven than Andrea Bocelli singing the Our Father with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.