“Ask and you shall receive.”

The Pastor’s Thoughts!

Jesus was in prayer when His disciples approached Him. Throughout the Gospels we hear that Jesus prayed. He prayed constantly. Jesus, the Son of God, always prayed! In fact, He spent the night before His Passion and Death in prayer. The disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They wanted to pray like He did but did not know how.

Prayer is our conversation with God. It expresses our intimate relationship with God. Jesus taught His disciples how they should pray. “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.’”

This is also how we are to pray! To thank God for who He is, our heavenly Father, and for what He has given us. We ask Him to always give us what we need, the grace to show each other the mercy that He shows us and to keep us safe from the evil of the devil.

We must be persistent in our prayer. God never tires of hearing us talk to Him in prayer. He never tires of our asking Him for what we need. He never tires of us coming to Him, our Father, as His children.

In our reading from the Book of Genesis, Abraham was persistent in his prayer. He asked God to spare Sodom, first for 50 innocent people, then all the way down to only 10 innocent people. God was patient with Abraham. He never tired of Abraham’s requests. Nor will He tire of hearing from us and listening to our requests. God always listens and God always responds.

Abraham’s prayer is a model of prayer for us. Abraham did not pray only for his needs, but also for the needs of others. The needs of others, as well as our own needs, are at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer. When we receive what we need in prayer, then we can pray for each other and to love and serve each other, in the example that Jesus gave us. “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.”

After receiving our Lord in the Eucharist at Mass, let us make all that we do a prayer to the God who lives within us. Let all that we do glorify His name by the way we love God and each other, by the way we live as Christians.

– Bishop Roy Campbell