THE LORD'S PRAYER

THURSDAY, 21 JUNE 2007
Reading: Matthew 6:7-15

People are often saying they don’t know how to pray. Jesus made it easy for us. He gave us the Lord’s Prayer. There is no better prayer than the Lord’s Prayer. It is the prayer of all prayers.
We praise our Father; we ask that his kingdom spread throughout the world; that his will be done at all times in all places.

And then we admit our dependence on him by asking him to supply us with all we need not only for our physical welfare but for our spiritual. And we promise to forgive everybody in the likeness of the way he forgives us.

In the Our Father we lay out in a few words the essence of a perfect relationship with our Creator. Anyone who knows the prayer and prays it should never think for a moment they don’t know how to pray.

We probably more often say the “Hail Mary”, don’t we? Nothing wrong with that! One Hail Mary changed the world. Gabriel’s greeting, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” wedded Mary to the Holy Spirit who then conceived in her the Savior who taught us the Our Father. The Hail Mary is a powerful prayer. We must never hesitate to pray it. But we should never think the prayer Jesus gave us is of lesser value. The Savior conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit gave the Lord’s Prayer to us to connect us to his Father in a never ending unity of love.

Talking to God by using his psalms or prayers composed by others and printed in books, is also good. And we can pray in our own words. We also must never forget to sit in silence and listen for God to speak to us. Prayer is communication with God; we should give him a chance to communicate with us by shutting our mouths and just listening. We must learn not only to say words with sincerity to him, we must listen for his words. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name .....“ “Now speak, Father, your child is listening.”