Word to the Wise
Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - 1st Week of Lent - Tues
[Isa 55:10-11 and Matt 6:7-15]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. This is how you are to pray, "Our Father...." [Matt.]
"How am I praying?" That question is one of four fundamental questions that I ask at a retreat or parish mission. (The other three are [fill in the blank]: learning? loving? serving?) It is a good question to ask in Lent! There is an old Latin dictum: "The way we pray is the way we believe [Lex orandi, lex credendi.] " Since Galilee was a rather mixed society of Jews and non-Jews, Jesus probably had opportunity to observe other religious practices. Given the word translated as "babble," the experience must have been colorful! Nevertheless, Jesus' admonition about prayer is something we can take to heart.
I have spoken before about a lady who came to see me with a large stack of devotional prayer cards. She had calculated all the spiritual "benefits" on those cards and figured she was certain to avoid purgatory and go directly to heaven! Her worry was that she didn't have enough time in the day to keep up the devotions, and she resisted my advice to give up some of them and focus on just a few! It was difficult to get her to take a good long look at her relationship to God by looking at the way she was praying! She had truly multiplied her words in the hopes of being heard.
Jesus goes on to teach the disciples how to pray. Perhaps this Lent we could just focus on the one prayer that he has taught us and give it our entire attention? Does the prayer reflect our relationship to God? If not, why not? Those few words of what we call "The Lord's Prayer," can teach us a lot and provide us with a response to the question: "How am I praying?" AMEN