Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

Readings of the day: RB 17 The Number of Psalms to be Sung at the Hours

Mass: Is 55:10-11; Resp. Ps 34; Mt 6:7-17

IN PRAYING, DO NOT BABBLE.

Let us pray as God our master has taught us. To ask the Father in words his Son has given us, to let him hear the prayer of Christ ringing in his ears, is to make our prayer one of friendship, a family prayer. Let the Father recognize the words of his Son. Let the Son who lives in our hearts be also on our lips. We have him as an advocate for sinners before the Father; when we ask forgiveness for our sins let us use the words given by our advocate. He tells us: Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. What more effective prayer could we then make in the name of Christ than in the words of his own prayer?

(St Cyprian)

OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN,

HALLOWED BE THY NAME,

THY KINGDOM COME,

THY WILL BE DONE,

ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD;

AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES,

AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US;

AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION,

BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

If you forgive others their trespasses,

your heavenly Father will also forgive you;

but if you do not forgive others,

neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

IS IT TIME TO ASK FOR FORGIVENESS?

IS IT TIME TO FORGIVE?

Saint John XXIII

Readings of the day: RB 8

Mass: Jonah 4:1-11; Resp. Psalm 86; Luke 11:1-4

Jesus taught the disciples many things, sometimes using words, other times not. As far as I know the disciples only asked Jesus once to teach them anything at all. Today they ask the Lord to teach them to pray. It seems a reasonable request considering they, with us, don’t know how to pray as we ought (Romans 8:26). Jesus doesn’t waste time, stating clearly,

When you pray, say:

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.

This prayer we know as the Lord’s Prayer, what Thomas Aquinas calls a most perfect prayer (Summa, II-II, q. 83, art. 9). Aquinas explains in these words: “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.’”

LORD, PLEASE TEACH US TO PRAY.

Speaking of prayer, today Saint Benedict begins his eleven chapters devoted to the ins and outs of praying the Divine Office in a monastic community. The Divine Office, also called the Liturgy of the Hours, is the official prayer of the Church. A beautiful and most instructive presentation on the theology of the Liturgy of the Hours can be found in the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, Ch. 1, para. 1-19, found online, or in Volume I, The Liturgy of the Hours According to the Roman Rite, pp. 21-34.

It is important that the celebration of Lauds and Vespers should never be concluded without the recitation by the Abbess of the whole of the Lord’s Prayer 

so that all may hear and attend to it.

(RB 13:12)

SAINT JOHN XXIII, PRAY FOR US.