Teach us to pray

July 22, 2019
Sister Eloise Rosenblatt, RSM
 
Father Carroll O’Sullivan, SJ, a dearly loved chaplain for the Sisters of Mercy in Burlingame, once said, “We pray to become someone, not to get something.” This is the message of Luke’s shorter version of “The Our Father.” In today’s Gospel, one of the disciples sees Jesus praying and asks him “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” In Genesis, Abraham pleaded with God to spare the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah - that the good character of a minority be enough to spare annihilation of an evil majority. In Luke the disciple also acts as a representative for others. “Teach us,” not just, “Teach me.” The first quality of a person of prayer is self-understanding as a mediator. Praying makes us a bridge-person, a go-between.
 
What was the urgency? Perhaps this disciple had once been a follower of John the Baptist, admired his powerful call to repentance, and was moved by his radical lifestyle of rejecting wealth and power. But John had been arrested, imprisoned by Herod (Luke 3:19) and then beheaded (Luke 9:9). Who will be the community’s spiritual teacher now? The disciple recognizes the soul-needs of others. Even if we learned to pray early in life, there is a fresh need, today. So the disciple asks, “Teach us to pray.” The disciple is ready to keep learning.
 
Jesus begins simply, “Father,” as one person to another. Matthew’s “Our Father” begins the words we pray in public gatherings (Matthew 6:9-13). This version addresses God communally, looking upward, in words sung majestically by a 300-person choir: “Our Father who art in heaven.” For Luke, the one who prays calls upon God as someone so close, God could be a parent sitting across the table. So the third quality for the person praying in the spirit of Luke’s Gospel is confidence in God’s nearness, in familial relationship.
 
Luke omits, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Isn’t doing God’s will important? “Our Father in heaven, ” whose will governs the universe, could be imagined a powerful king, not related to us by blood, distant, unapproachable, demanding, focused on the affairs of the realm, and unaffected by puny human needs. God’s will is “done” to us, and we are helpless. Luke’s emphasis redacts this view, inviting emphasis on our familial relation with God.
 
A fourth quality Luke stresses is that a person of prayer has a sense of identity with God, providing for the needs of others who are hungry and exhausted from their own long journeys. Luke’s parable is much longer than the prayer itself. A householder begs an abundantly supplied neighbor for extra bread to feed a guest who is hungry. It’s an emergency. This is a neighbor whom the householder knows well enough to bang on his door in the middle of the night. There is warm humor in imagining God as a sleeping neighbor, who will inevitably respond out of friendship, or if the pounding is noisy and persistent enough.
 
A fifth quality is that a person who prays authentically is living in the present moment. “Give us this day our daily bread”-- in both Luke and Matthew. The person shaped by this prayer entrusts her needs to God. She has utter confidence because she believes her God is Abundance and Readiness and Giving - and has a fully stocked supply of bread ready to dispense at any hour of the day or night, right now.
 
A sixth quality is an optimistic view of oneself and God. Disappointment, opposition, reversals, heavy burdens or injustices that I suffer in daily life do not get projected onto God. Juliana of Norwich counseled those who felt God did not answer when they knocked: Let rise in your heart a more perfect prayer; await a better time, or a more perfect gift.
 
A seventh quality in a person shaped by true prayer is the most amazing of all. You yourselves give a fish, an egg when your child asks. When you feel tender love for your teen in meltdown, sympathy for your special needs child, compassion for your Alzheimer-afflicted spouse, anxiety for your aging parent - you are like God. When you pray, you discover your God is like you.
 
Mercy Sister Eloise Rosenblatt is a Ph.D. theologian and family law attorney in private practice. She lives in San Jose.