27th Week Night Office Reading From a conference of John TAULER
Mass Intro The Gospel is the shorter version of the ‘Our Father’, St. Luke 11:1-4 The Matthew (Mt. 6:9-13) ‘Our Father’ is the one we ‘know by heart’. That is how we say it familiarly, but in fact it can be the mechanical habit of a prayer. The Dominican, Tauler, in the Night Office Reading, used the brief prayer, ASK, SEEK, KNOCK. Even the briefest can be mechanical. Tauler reminds; “we must use whatever methods of prayer come to us, whether they are directed to God's divinity or to the Holy Trinity or to the passion or the sacred wounds of our Lord.” It can be misleading to learning a prayer ‘by heart’ as it can be just as mechanical. The truth is to pray ‘by heart of heart, of heart, of heart’, we must bring our hearts home Tauler provides the choice of words. From a conference by John Tauler God is ready to give if we will only ask him properly; and he has been at pains to tell us and urge us and teach us how to ask him properly. All the same, his gifts are only given to those who beg and pray and keep on praying, never to idlers and loungers. We should observe what we must ask for, and how. If we want to be wholehearted in our prayer, above everything else we must bring our hearts home, call them back from their wanderings among created things, from their distractions, and then with deep humility we must prostrate ourselves at God's feet and ask him to be merciful and generous to us. We must knock at the Father's heart and beg for bread. This bread is God's love. If we have no bread, then we have no appetite for any other food, however rich it may be; we cannot enjoy it, it does not nourish us. God's love is like that; it is the one thing we really need. So we must ask God to give to us, and ask him to teach us in our prayer and in our spiritual exercises, how to ask him in the way most pleasing to him and most profitable to us. Then we must use whatever methods of prayer come to us, whether they are directed to God's divinity or to the Holy Trinity or to the passion or the sacred wounds of our Lord. So "ask" means ask the Lord for something. It is not given to everyone to use purely mental prayer; some people have to use words. If you need to do this, speak to our dear Lord lovingly and tenderly with all the most loving words you can think of. This will raise up your love and your heart. Ask the heavenly Father to give you a foretaste of himself through his only Son in whatever way is most pleasing to him; and when you have found the form of prayer that suits you best, even if it is the remembrance of your sins and your faults, persevere in it and make it your own. "Seek" means seek out whatever is most pleasing to God and most profitable to you. And "knock" means apply yourself with zeal and persistence; because the prize is given to the person who persists to the end. Response: Mt. 7:7. Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find; + knock and the door will be opened to you. … |
MEDITATION OF THE DAY www.magnificant.com
Praying "Our Father"
from Jesus of Nazarene (Pope 1966)
We must therefore let Jesus teach us what father really means. In Jesus' discourses, the Father appears as the source of all good, as the measure of the rectitude (perfection) of man ... The love that endures "to the end" (In 13: 1), which the Lord fulfilled on the cross in praying for his enemies, shows us the essence of the Father. He is this love. Because Jesus brings it to completion, he is entirely "Son", and he invites us to become "sons" according to this criterion ...
The Lord reminds us that fathers do not give their children stones when they ask for bread. He then goes on to say: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Mt 7: 9ff.). Luke specifies the "good gifts" that the Father gives; he says, "how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Lk 11: 13).
This means that the gift of God is God himself. The "good things" that he gives us are himself. This reveals in a surprising way what prayer is really all about: it is not about this or that, but about God's desire to offer us the gift of himself - that is the gift of all gifts, the "one thing necessary". Prayer is a way of gradually purifying and correcting our wishes and of slowly coming to realise what we really need: God and his Spirit.
Benedict XVI elected to Pope 2005.
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