Prayer as Relationship!

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Is 55:10-11; Mt 6: 7-15

In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us to pray. 

This passage where Jesus teaches his disciples the famous ‘Our Father’ prayer is exemplary because Jesus wants us to appeal to God affectionately as our ‘Father’ and not as someone whom we try to impress with our diction and elocution. 

For Jesus, prayer is not a speech practice but a relationship that can exist even in the absence of words, just like a mother and a child communicate for nearly two years before the child can learn to speak. 

Secondly, Jesus has taught us to call God ‘Our’ Father, so that humanity can think of itself as children of a loving father, with nothing to separate us on any basis. 

Through this prayer, Jesus teaches us how to relate to God. 

This relationship thrives on faith, hope, love, trust, sincerity, and humility.

Let us follow Jesus’ grammar and find in God an affectionate and loving Father!

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar