The three
traditional practices associated with Lent are fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. With respect to each, Jesus offers sound
advice on the proper attitude when carrying out these practices. For one, Jesus warns against seeking praise
from others for our good deeds.
As he puts it with respect to prayer, “…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 6:7-8).
Even so, Jesus
himself often went out alone to a secluded place and prayed to his heavenly
Father (Lk 5:16; 6:12). Rarely is the
content of his prayer revealed to us. What
we do know suggests that, during his prayer, Jesus spoke openly and honestly
with his heavenly Father, holding back nothing (cf. Mt 26:39). Since he came to do the Father’s will, we can
be sure that Jesus spent time in prayer discerning what that might
involve. If Jesus often found it
necessary to spend time in prayer with the heavenly father, surely we can do no
better than to follow his example.
Because of his own devotion to prayer, Jesus
taught his disciples how to pray when he offered them what has become the classic
model for genuine prayer, the Lord’s Prayer (Mt 6:9-17). With this prayer, Jesus offers a loving and
beautiful way to talk openly and honestly with our heavenly Father. The words that Jesus gave us are a model that
contain all we need to know about how to pray.
The beauty and simplicity of the Lord’s Prayer is why it has a special
and distinct part in the Sunday liturgy of most churches.
From beginning to
end, the heart of the Lord’s prayer is a focus on our relationship with God and
with each other. To begin with the
salutation “Our Father” is to proclaim and acknowledge that we are all children
of God—Jew, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Atheist, and Muslim alike. With this opening remark, Jesus unites all of
us in the same spiritual family with the same relationship to one another in
God. Thus, to suggest that God prefers
Christians over Muslims, for example, is opposed to what God wants.
To end with
the plea that God should “Forgive us our debts as we forgive others” is a
powerful request for the same measure that we use against others to be used against us. This request is thus a sure guide for our
response to those who need our forgiveness.
It also serves as a reminder of the beatitude, blessed are those who show
mercy, for mercy shall be theirs.
Prayer, fasting and
almsgiving are the three legs of a traditional Lenten practice. If we apply these three themes to our daily
lives during this season of Lent, I suspect that we will be better off at the
end of Lent than when we began.
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