Homily 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time - July 24, 2022
Readings can be found here.
Lord, teach
us to pray. Our Catholic tradition is
rich in prayer. There are numerous ways
we can pray. There are formal prayers
like the rosary, the liturgy of the hours, novenas, etc. There are prayers to the saints for
intercession. There are informal prayers
that we offer up for any number of reasons.
We can find a variety books on how to pray or to deepen our prayer
life. It can seem rather complicated at
times with all the choices. Two weeks
ago, Father Joe reminded us in his homily that our faith is simple. Love God, love our neighbor, follow the commandments,
focus on Jesus. Today, Jesus teaches us how to pray and what to pray for about
as simply as can be.
One of the
disciples asks Jesus to teach them to pray.
Jesus gives us what we now call the Our Father or the Lord’s
Prayer. We’re more familiar with the
longer version in the Gospel of Matthew.
Luke’s version is shorter and simpler.
We acknowledge God as Father. God
loves us as a parent loves their child.
Like children, we should look to God for our needs. We recognize that God is holy and deserves
our praise. We pray that God’s will be
done. We do this BEFORE we pray for
anything for ourselves. Only after
asking for the coming of God’s kingdom do we ask for what we need for the
day. Not what we necessarily want, but
what we NEED today. Next we pray for
God’s mercy for our sins. We’re also
reminded to be merciful to others and forgive them for sinning against us. Finally, we pray to God for strength against
temptation.
How often
have we prayed the Lord’s Prayer, either the longer or shorter version? It’s so familiar to us that we almost don’t
think about it. Perhaps we should. When we pray as Jesus taught, do we pay
attention to what we’re saying? Luke’s
version has only six lines. Each line is
a prayer in itself. God is holy and
deserves our worship and praise. May
God’s will be done. Give us what we need
for today. Forgive our sins. Help us forgive others. Give us strength not to sin. When praying the Lord’s Prayer, consider
reflecting for a few moments on each line before going to the next. It’s an opportunity to listen to God respond
to us as we pray. What might God be
trying to tell us?
We can look
at the Lord’s Prayer in other ways also.
The Gospels give us the prayer in the plural: OUR Father, give US our
daily bread. Forgive OUR sins. When we pray in this way, we’re praying not
only for ourselves, but others. Who in
our lives needs our prayers today?
However, we can make the prayer intimately personal. Try changing the pronouns to MY. My Father, give ME my daily bread, forgive MY
sins as I forgive others. Or perhaps we
want to pray for a specific person. Give
my Joe his daily bread. Forgive my sins
as I forgive Susie. We’re called to pray
continuously. We can pray a particular
line from the Lord’s Prayer when we need it.
When we’re struggling with a decision, we can simply pray Father,
hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
Our faith
is simple. Love God and neighbor, follow
God’s commandments, focus on Jesus.
Jesus taught us that praying is simple.
Jesus gives us six lines that covers all we need to pray for. We can use this prayer in any number of ways. Though simple, it’s an extremely powerful
prayer. How can we use this simple
prayer to change our lives and deepen our faith?
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