The main themes of today’s Scripture readings are the power of intercessory prayer, the Our Father as the ideal prayer, and the necessity for persistence and perseverance in prayer, with trusting faith and boldness. In short, the readings teach us what to pray and how to pray.
The first reading, taken from the book of Genesis, gives us the model for intercessory prayer provided by Abraham in his dialogue with God. Although Abraham seems to be trying to manipulate God through his skilful bargaining and humble, persistent intercession, God is actually being moved to mercy by the goodness of a few innocent souls.
The second reading, taken from the Letter to the Colossians, does not deal with prayer directly, but it provides a basis for all Christian prayers, especially for liturgical prayer: the mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul assures us that even when we were dead in sin, God gave us new life through Jesus and pardoned all our sins.
In the Gospel passage, after teaching a model prayer, Jesus instructs his disciples to pray to God their Heavenly Father with the same boldness, daring, intimacy, conviction, persistence and perseverance Abraham displayed and the friend in need in the parable employed. He gives us the assurance that God will not be irritated by our requests or unwilling to meet them with generosity. Prayer: persistent and persevering: In the second part of today’s Gospel – by presenting the parable of a friend in need, Jesus emphasises our need for persistent and persevering prayer, acknowledging our total dependence on God. In the ancient Hebrew world, hospitality was the essence of one’s goodness. To welcome a visitor without food and drink was unthinkable. A traveller who was travelling in the evening to avoid the heat of the afternoon, might well arrive late at night. But the villagers used to go to bed early, as they had no electricity. So, in this parable, when a man received unexpected guests late at night and found his cupboard bare, he went to his neighbour and woke him in order to borrow a loaf of bread. In those days, people generally slept in one room, the children bedded down with the adults. Rising to answer the door would disrupt the whole family and hence the neighbour was reluctant to get up. Finally, however, because of the persistence of his guest, he got up and gave bread to his neighbour. This parable does not mean that God is a reluctant giver. Rather it stresses the necessity of our persisting in prayer as the expression of our total dependence on God. Persevering in prayer helps us to purify our prayer, to make clear to ourselves our values and hopes, and to lead us to ask for what is really in our very best interests. St. Paul tells us to “pray without ceasing” (Romans), “pray at all times” (Ephesians), “be steadfast in prayer” (Colossians), and “pray constantly” (Thessalonians). Jesus assures us, “Knock and the door shall be opened.”
“Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes me.”
A colleague asked C.S. Lewis if he really thought he could change God with his prayer for the cure of his wife’s cancer. Lewis replied: “Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes me.” William McGill summed it up this way. “The value of persistent prayer is not that God will hear us but that we will finally hear God.” Keep in mind that Jesus has taught us to address God as Father. A loving Father listens to his child, but does not blindly endorse every request. Instead, the loving Father provides what is needed, including discipline. Bishop Sheen has this comment on prayer: “The man who thinks only of himself says prayers of petition. He who thinks of his neighbour says prayers of intercession. He who thinks only of loving and serving God says prayers of abandonment to God’s will, and that is the prayer of the saints.” To pray is not to impose our will on God but to ask God to make us open to His will; in other words, we pray not to change God’s mind but for God to change ours. The Our Father is the “summary of the whole Gospel” (Tertullian) and it is the “perfect prayer” (St. Thomas Aquinas). “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.” (St. Thomas Aquinas, as quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2763) We need to avoid giving lame reasons why we don’t pray.
Modern Christians give four lame excuses for not praying.
a) The first excuse: We are too busy. The richer a culture is, the less time it has for prayer, because money and wealth provide distractions. Researchers say that the average Christian living in a wealthy country prays four minutes a day. Often the first thing given up by a busy Christian is his prayer life.
b) A second excuse: We don’t believe prayer does that much good, other than giving us psychological motivation to be better persons. But besides giving us psychological motivation, prayer establishes and augments our relationship with God, the source of our power.
c) A third excuse: We think a loving God should provide for us and protect us from the disasters of life, such as disease or accidents, without our asking Him. Prayer expresses our awareness of our need for God and our dependence on Him.
d) A fourth excuse: We think prayer is boring. People who use this excuse forget the fact that prayer is a conversation with God: listening to God speaking to us through the Bible, and talking to God. You can’t have a close relationship with anyone, including God, without persistent and intimate conversation. Four minutes a day is not much intimate conversation.
Since our society concludes that prayer doesn’t work, it turns to sex, violence and unhealthy addictions resulting in broken marriages, broken families, psychological problems, moral decadence, spiritual poverty, law-and-order problems, and prison populations.