\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The “Our Father” – the core message of today’s Gospel.\u00c2\u00a0 It is God made man’s instruction to us on how we should pray.\u00c2\u00a0 If any of you have a copy of the New Catechism of the Catholic Church, there’s a wonderful section that summarizes the depth and richness of this simple prayer.\u00c2\u00a0 The catechism quotes the great Doctor of the Church,\u00c2\u00a0 St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, who says “The Our Father is the most perfect of Christian Prayers, because it not only instructs us on how we should make our petitions to God, but it also tells us what the right order, the right sequence, of our prayer should be”.\u00c2\u00a0 How awesome is that!\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
When you heard the “Our Father” proclaimed this morning when the Gospel was read, did you think to yourself- “Oh yes, I know that prayer”; or did you think of it as something as profound as St. Thomas Aquinas described?\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, once and a while, we need to step back from the familiar things of our Faith and contemplate them with some intensity.\u00c2\u00a0 The “Our Father” is one of those things.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, the “Our Father” is very short, direct, and comprehensive, not at all like the babbling of the pagans.\u00c2\u00a0 Second, it refers to “Our” Father, not “My” Father; and so, as we are being told how to pray, the emphasis is on the community, not on us as individual prayers.\u00c2\u00a0 Third, the sequence has our relationship with God in the proper order:\u00c2\u00a0 First, an offering of praise to God; then an emphasis on the divine will over our will; only then do we ask for what we really need- starting with sustenance and ending with forgiveness for our sins.\u00c2\u00a0 These are the two things Jesus says we need the most.\u00c2\u00a0 Notice that in the last paragraph of today’s Gospel, which is not part of the prayer itself, Jesus repeats and emphasizes our need to forgive\u00c2\u00a0 In order to merit God’s forgiveness.\u00c2\u00a0 And lastly, the prayer ends as we ask for avoidance of temptation.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The “Our Father” can become a mechanical prayer, one that is recited from rote memory, and not a prayer of the heart.\u00c2\u00a0 But, when we understand it as a guide, a formula that gets to the heart of a proper relationship with God, then, it is anything but a rote prayer.\u00c2\u00a0 It is the most perfect Christian Prayer.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0 Thursday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time Sirach 48: 1-14; Matthew 6: 7-15 Dc. Larry Brockman The “Our Father” – the core message of today’s Gospel.\u00c2\u00a0 It is God made man’s instruction to us on how we should pray.\u00c2\u00a0 If any of you have a copy of the New Catechism of the Catholic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}