“He 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’” (Luke 11:1).
Do you remember who it was who taught you to pray? Do you remember when you learned to pray? One of my most vivid memories of my recently deceased mother is of the time that she taught me how to pray the rosary. We were living on Adler Street in Milwaukee. She was standing at an ironing board, hair in pin curlers and wrapped in a scarf (This was long before permanent press.). I was sitting at the kitchen table. Her rosary was on the table. I started to play with it. Instead of telling me not to play with it, she taught me how to say the rosary.
Like the situation in the Gospel, she taught me the words to say. However, prayer isn’t a matter of saying certain words. Prayer is a relationship. Prayer fills the need for communication in a relationship. Just like any human relationship, our relationship with God needs communication. Prayer supplies that.
Can you imagine a human relationship that would last if there was never any communication between the people in that relationship? What would happen to the relationship if no one ever reminded the other that they were loved? What would happen if no one ever said “Thank you.” What would happen if no one ever said they were sorry? These are all rhetorical questions because the answer is obvious. No relationship can last if there isn’t some sort of communication between the people in the relationship. The same is true of our relationship with God.
We can be taught the words to say. However, no one can teach us the relationship side of prayer. We must learn that by experience.
The parable that St. Luke appends to the teaching about prayer teaches us about relationships. A man comes begging for bread for a friend who has shown up announced. Villages only had one oven. The women of the village took turns baking bread, the food upon which these people existed. Because of this, it would not be unusual for a household to without fresh bread. So this man went to a neighbor, probably the neighbor whose wife used the oven that day. Although Jesus says that the man would act because of the neighbor’s persistence, there is more to it. If he refused, he might find himself in the same position someday. People who inhabited the same village lived in peace by preserving the relationship of friendship and kinship.
St. Luke continues by telling us to ask, to seek and to knock. He also tells us what will happen if we do so. We will receive the greatest gift we could imagine, the Holy Spirit. We might not get what we ask for, or what we are seeking, but the gift of the Holy Spirit is better than anything else we could imagine.
As we rest from the usual activity today, stop to consider who it was who first taught you how to pray. Then stop and thank God for that gift, the gift of prayer.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator