Your Heavenly Father Knows!

Thursday, June 19, 2025

2 Cor 11:1-11; Mt 6:7-15

Today’s Gospel contains some key insights on prayer.

The prayer that Jesus teaches implies that it is an act where the beloved children call upon an affectionate Father who knows all their needs. 

For the reasons of such relationality, Jesus emphasizes that a profound earnestness should characterize our prayers. 

Jesus’ insistence on maintaining earnestness in our prayers underlines the fact that our prayers are answered because God is our affectionate Father and not because of our eloquence or verbosity. In other words, our personal and trusting relationship becomes the basis for our prayer and not the skill with which we try to appeal to God. 

If we take a closer look at the passage, when Jesus invites us to call on God as our ‘heavenly’ ‘Father,’ he balances reverence (heavenly) and intimacy (Father). This is an important attitude for prayer. 

Above all, Jesus highlights the ‘communal’ nature of Christian identity. The believing community calls on God as ‘Our’ Father and not ‘My’ Father. Thus, Christian prayer will lose its essence if it disregards the fraternal dimension. 

In sum, for Jesus, we pray…

• With the assurance that God knows our needs even before we ask Him.
• To God, our affectionate Father who listens to our simple words uttered in faith.
• So that our reverence and intimacy for God are reflected in our lives.
• That God’s answer to our petitions depends on our own responsiveness to what we ask.

Let us pray that our prayers may be personal, simple, relational, communal, and sincere.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar