June 20, 2013
Thursday
11th Week in Ordinary Time 1st Reading:
2 Cor 11:1–11
Gospel: Mt 6:7–15
Jesus said to his disciples, “When you pray, do not use a lot of words, as the pagans do, for they hold that the more they say, the more chance they have of being heard. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need, even before you ask him. “This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, holy be your name, your kingdom come and your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today the kind of bread we need. Forgive us our debts just as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us. Do not bring us to the test but deliver us from the evil one. “If you forgive others their wrongs, your Father in heaven will also forgive yours. If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive you either.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in
the Assimilated Life
Experience)
How many times have we thoughtlessly worded our prayer and appeared like we were wrestling with God? To our consolation, there is a big chance those prayers didn’t reach God at all. “Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (Shakespeare, Hamlet). In any case, prayer is not a tug-o-war game with the Lord. On the contrary, it is aligning one’s will to God’s will. This requires not so many words. If we examine the prayer the Lord taught his disciples, there is only one line asking for “bread”; the rest are meant to dispose the heart to God’s decision.
We are bound by the same pattern at prayer. When we pray
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name” we commit ourselves to a lifestyle befitting God’s children. This raises our awareness of our dignity as heaven-bound and decreases our appetite for sin.
When we pray “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, we commit ourselves to the zeal of building God’s kingdom on earth. This increases our desire to be charitable in order to hasten the formation of God’s kingdom in our midst.
“Give us this day our daily bread” is not even the tug- o-war zone. It is supposed to heighten faith in God’s capacity to provide and so detach our hearts from the greedy desire to pile up beyond the amount of “bread” we need for the day.
When we pray “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”, we commit our hearts to the work of reconciliation. When we pray “Do not bring us to the test but deliver us from evil”, we commit ourselves to rejecting not just sin but even the slightest indication of it.
Obviously, if we use the “Our Father” as pattern as we pray, words are few but thoughts overflow. As sure as Shakespeare we know that our prayers to heaven go. Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website:www.frdan.org.
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