Tuesday March 11, 2014
1st Week of Lent
1st Reading: Is 55:10–11
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)
A little boy texted God the following prayer: “Our Father thou art in heaven, Harold be thy name…” An angel replied: “Missent! God is not Harold.” The boy texted again: “Give us this day our daily bread with French fries and a drink of marmalade…” The angel replied: “You are ordering, not praying!” One last time the boy texted: “Do not bring us to the test but deliver us some email. Amen”.
Unlike that boy all of us have memorized the Our Father by heart. But do we really know how to pray? A story is told of three men who even made an issue out of the body’s position while praying. One said kneeling, while the other insisted that lying prostrate on the ground is the most effective body position in praying. The electrician gave this thought-provoking answer: “The best position in prayer is when I am up there hanging up-side-down held only by cables at my waist repairing a live electric transmission line.”
The first thing to consider in learning how to pray is not body posture but attitude. The electrician’s disposition of total self surrender is the best attitude that disposes one to enter into prayer. On this point many of us fail since in most of our prayers we treat God like a vendo machine. Vendo machines pertain to entrepreneurship while prayer is about relationship.
So prayer is not really about making a list of our urgent needs and placing orders of the same before God. The Lord already knows what we need even before we pray (Matt. 6:8). Prayer is about deepening relationship with God to the effect that one’s faith in God’s divine providence is never shaken at any moment of crisis. When we cry out in prayer, we should cry out the louder when it is time to say: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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