Pentecost Nine: on Prayer. prayer, and discovered that there were dozens of hits. One site alone produced

Transcription

1 Pentecost Nine: on Prayer When I sat down at the computer to prepare my homily for today, I Googled prayer, and discovered that there were dozens of hits. One site alone produced seven pages of quotes about prayer. It is evidently a topic about which much has been written and said so my chances of saying anything original today are pretty slim. If I cannot say anything original, I hope that I may at least say something helpful. Let me begin by suggesting what prayer is not. Prayer is not magic. It is not a sanctified lucky rabbit s foot or talisman to ward off evil. It is not a get out of jail free card. It is not a means of bargaining with God as in Get me out of this mess and I ll never [and you can name the transgression] again. And it is most emphatically not the sole province of those of us in Holy Orders. So much for what prayer is not. What is prayer? First, and perhaps most obvious, prayer is a major component of our corporate worship. The gathered community prays together. The purpose of our Prayer Book is not simply so that you can follow along and check the celebrant s accuracy. The purpose of the Prayer Book is to enable you to pray with the celebrant. Worship is corporate, and ours in particular is participatory. It is not a spectator activity. We do it together. 1

2 Second, prayer is our acknowledgement of our total dependency on God. It is the means by which we express our understanding of our creature-hood. Prayer shapes our perspective. The value of consistent prayer, said one writer is not that God will hear us, but that we will hear Him. So then, how do we pray? Jesus provides a wonderful model in the Lord s Prayer, both in Matthew and in today s reading from Luke s Gospel. Bishop Shaver tells the story of Mr. Moody, who was the rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Muncie back in the sixties. Mr. Moody and not Father Moody was a low-church Anglican, but an unswerving follower of the Prayer Book. He participated in the local ministerial association, and at one of their meetings, the president of the association, a protestant who deplored liturgy and formality, announced that Mr. Moody will open our meeting with one of his read prayers. The Rev. Mr. Moody began, Our Father, who art in heaven.... No one has ever improved on that prayer. It embodies all the elements of Christian prayer. It acknowledges God s sovereignty: Our Father who art in heaven. It acknowledges His deity: Hallowed be thy Name. The Lord s Prayer then moves on to pray that God's Kingdom will become the norm on earth, replacing human governments, which too often are driven by greed and power. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in 2

3 heaven. This is a prayer that the last things will happen that heaven will come to earth. Only then do we turn to our own needs, and ask our Father for our basic human needs to be satisfied: Give us this day our daily bread. Or do we? St. Jerome, one of the Doctors of the Church, who had access to a lost Gospel a Gospel written in Aramaic, the Gospel of the Hebrews rendered that petition Give us this day the Bread of Tomorrow not a prayer that we might hoard bread, but that we might be fed at the Eucharist with a foretaste of the Bread that Jesus will feed us in the Kingdom of God. Tomorrow is when the Kingdom of God will come, and the will of God will be perfectly done. And that He would forgive the wrong things that we have done. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Note that our being forgiven is contingent on our willingness to forgive. We don t pray to be better people. We pray for God s mercy! We ask for God's guidance and protection as we journey through life. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Aside from our corporate prayer here, when should we pray? If prayer is our means of acknowledging God s sovereignty and our dependency on Him then our hearts and minds should always be in an attitude of prayer. Prayer, said Walter 3

4 A. Mueller, is not merely an occasional impulse to which we respond when we are in trouble: prayer is a life attitude. The novelist Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables, wrote that Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. If we are truly attuned to God, our thoughts on behalf of loved ones can indeed become prayers. The mechanics are less important than the attitude of heart and mind. Having said that, let me hasten to add that the mechanics are important aids to devotion. I believe every Christian s home should contain some kind of tangible reminder of our faith a cross, a crucifix, an icon, a rosary something to call our attention away from the everyday, mundane concerns of life and point us to Jesus, reminding us to pray without ceasing. I would also suggest that every Christian and in particular every catholic Christian should have in his or her home a place devoted to the practice of prayer a nook, a table, a corner, a chair under a window someplace set aside for prayer. I would further suggest that we should all have a particular time set aside each day for prayer. Our Prayer Book has wonderful resources: the orders for daily morning, noonday, and evening prayer and Compline. They can be adapted for use by individuals; and there are literally hundreds of on-line resources. I would further suggest that we keep a written list of prayer requests. 4

5 A final thought: Our Lord s disciples asked Him to teach them to pray. That is why we have catechesis. We teach our children to pray. Whatever else we teach them, we must teach them to pray! Prayer must be more, much more than something we do as a last resort, or in haste, when we happen to think of it. Prayer should be the prevailing attitude of our hearts and minds. It is exhaling the spirit of man and inhaling the Spirit of God. 5