Wednesday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the Day
RB: Ch 7:62-70
Mass: Ga 2:1-2, 7-14; Resp Ps 117; Lk 11:1-4

When you pray, say …

About this same time last year (October 11, 2017), we had the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray. Today's image then comes from my treasured picture postcard collection and shows the Lord's Prayer in isiZulu! In the Jubilee Year 2000 I was fortunate to travel on pilgrimage to the Holy Land which included a visit to the Church of the Pater Noster on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The pilgrim will find there many plaques (one website says over 100) displayed with the Lord's Prayer in a variety of languages and dialects (another website says the Lord's Prayer is displayed in 62 different languages). And they sell postcards.

Jesus doesn't make it complicated. He provides us with a short, concise prayer that can be said anywhere, alone or with others. At Redwoods we pray the Lord's Prayer in common four times a day. St Thomas's reason for calling the Lord's Prayer perfect bears repeating: “The Lord’s Prayer is most perfect, because as Augustine says, ‘if we pray rightly and fittingly, we can say nothing else but what is contained in this prayer of Our Lord’” (Summa, II-II, q. 83, art. 9). Evagrius Ponticus (345-399) has this to say: If you wish to pray then it is God whom you need. It is God who gives prayer to the one who prays. On that account call upon God saying: Hallowed by Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come. 

So, why not call upon God at this very moment.

Father, hallowed by your name,

your Kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread

and forgive us our sins

for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,

and do not subject us to the final test.

GO OUT TO ALL THE WORLD, AND TELL THE GOOD NEWS.
(Resp Ps 117)