Prayer!

I have not made any posting for about two weeks now. The reason is partly laziness; but then there is the usual running around which form part of the demands of my day-to-day life. They say that ‘procrastination is the thief of time.’ So true! I have said to myself time and time again, I have to write today, but then my today becomes tomorrow, and tomorrow becomes my today again which never really came, because I have not been able to write. Today I want to reflect on a common topic that everyone knows about but few people put it into practice. Prayer!

So what really is prayer? We know prayer as the raising up of our mind and heart to God. That is very simply working definition of prayer. There are many ways we can achieve this goal. There are many devotions out there that may be confused with prayer or may be I should that form the component of what we call prayer. One thing is sure; everyone must be engaged in one form of prayer or the other. A wise person put it neatly thus, “The soul that does not pray is sick and emits offensive odor.” Ouch! If we do not spend sometime in commun with our creator, we would be “running well but off the road” as our brother St. Augustine would have us believe. The point of this post is not to teach you about prayer. It is only to remind you that if you are not praying, there is something wrong with your life.

Jesus Christ, the second person of the blessed Trinity, God’s own special Son, showed us that no matter who we are, we must make sure that we are connected to the source of our strength. Christ never embarked on any project of his life without having a deep and serious dialogue with His Father. To prepare for his ministry, Christ went first of all to his cousin John to receive baptism. As soon as He received baptism He went into the desert to fast and pray for forty days and forty nights. He had to be sure that His mission had the blessing of His Father. Does it then surprise you that Christ was a powerful and fearless preacher? It should not. His Father was behind him, hence his strength. Before he selected his companions, Luke tells us, “In those days he departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named apostles” Lk. 12-13.

Jesus prayed so much that the apostles wanted to pray as He did. So they asked Him to teach them to pray, and He taught them the ‘Our Father’, which is the mother of all prayers. He also gave a powerful instruction on prayer. He said, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them…but when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” Mt. 6:5-8. This means that we do not pray to tell God about our good qualities, we should simply show up and present ourselves to Him, and He will do the rest. As you pray please remember me.