Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
October 9, 2024
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/100924.cfm
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say:Father, hallowed be your name,
your Kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us to the final test.”
Luke 11:1-4
Today’s Gospel shows us the centrality of prayer in the life of Jesus and his disciples. The prayer Jesus leaves us in this passage is a prayer of presence, an intimate conversation with the God who supplies our needs.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Like the disciples, we ask Jesus to teach us how to pray – to move from recitation to presence; to move from timed practice to timeless oneness.
Thoughts – from Thomas Merton
First of all, prayer is a spiritual activity. This activity engages the highest faculties of our soul, our mind and our will. To be valid, prayer must be intelligent and it must be an act of sincere love. Already we can see that prayer is one of the most perfect actions a man can perform. When we pray properly we are exercising our intelligence and we are working with our will. This cannot be done without interior discipline. The more we practice prayer the stronger do these higher faculties become, and so they regain their lost control over the passions which are the root of all prejudice and of all error. Thus, in the natural order alone, the true practice of prayer would be sufficient to elevate and purify the soul to some extent. But this presupposes that prayer is really prayer and not pious automatism, or mere exterior formalism, or, worse still, an act of blind superstition. These dangers mustall be obviated by the constant striving for intelligent attention and for a sincere, earnest and fervent intention of the will.
Music: Lord, Teach Us to Pray – Joe Wise
Lavish Mercy 