Often in the confessional, I will hear sins of anger, resentment, bitterness, impatience, and lust. After the penitent confesses, I often find myself asking about the penitent’s prayer life. How often do you pray? And so often, I hear, “I don’t pray as often as I should, Father.”
How can we be surprised when we fail to love our neighbor as we should, when we don’t love God as we should—when we fail to come to Him who is the fountain of love and mercy through prayer?
“The rightness of our life depends upon the rightness of our prayer”
Throughout His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives his followers clear teaching on how to rightly order their lives, so to be he faithful disciples and to become worthy of the kingdom of heaven. And right at the heart of His Sermon, Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray. Prayer is needed for faithful discipleship.
The Lord then teaches the perfect prayer. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, “The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect of prayers. . . . In it we ask, not only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired. This prayer not only teaches us to ask for things, but also in what order we should desire them.”
The Our Father can be divided into seven petitions. The first three petitions ask God to draw us toward His glory; the last four petition God for the assistance only He can give. First we seek God’s glory, then we seek His aid in our earthly lives.
“The first series of petitions carries us toward him, for his own sake: thy name, thy kingdom, thy will! It is characteristic of love to think first of the one whom we love. In none of the three petitions do we mention ourselves”
In the Lord’s Prayer, just helps us order our lives by turning to God, asking God, to help us put His Will First. Why do we so often sin? Why do we so often fail to love the people in our lives with selfless love? Why are we so impatient and unforgiving? We fail to put God first.
Lenten prayer helps us to reorient, recalibrate, redevote our lives to God. May our Lenten prayer help us to overcome our sins, to be filled with God’s love, and seek first the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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That the Church will experience the graces of profound renewal during this season of Lent. We pray to the Lord.
That all families will recommit themselves to fervent prayer this Lent so as to grow in greater love and holiness. We pray to the Lord.
For an end to abortion and for the reverence and protection of human life. We pray to the Lord.
For the engaged couples attending our parish’s Pre-Cana Day this weekend, that the Lord will increase in them His gifts of love to prepare them rightly and chastely for the sacrament of marriage, and for a strengthening of all marriages. We pray to the Lord.
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