Tuesday of the First Week
Jesus’ teaching on how we are to pray come after He has previously instructed his followers on the Beatitudes, which describe how God’s blessings are to be imparted to those having virtues such as meekness, mercy, righteousness, and reconciliation. They speak to our interactions with others, and teach us ways in which we can give. But when Jesus turns to teaching us how to pray, He tells us to do so in privacy, enabling us to have a personal conversation with God. And in the Lord’s prayer, after first praising God, we submit our personal petitions, most of which can be understood in terms of basic human needs [bread, lack of debt (housing), etc.].
It is the generality of these needs that lets us expand our Lord’s prayer from strictly private to its public sharing at Mass. By extending our hands, either individually or connected to others, we express our openness to God in partnership and bonding with other believers. Our greater community may be seen to include not only those who recite the Lord’s prayer directly (Catholics and other Christians), but all others who, either individually or in another religious group, believe in God. In the words of Henri Nouwen, “To pray means to open our hands before God … recognizing that God is wherever we are.” Today we add “and where other believers are.”
Bill Geiger
Worshipping Community
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