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Gospel: Luke 11: 1-4
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.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Prayer is essential to the life of a disciple. But sometimes we don’t know how to pray… or what to say. Let me share what I prayed this morning:
“I thank you, Father, that I’ve not been greedy; I’ve not been selfish; I’ve not been rude to my neighbor; I’ve not spoken ill of anyone; I’ve not coveted what isn’t mine.”
“But now I must get out bed!”
(I’m only kidding).
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I’m sure we all start the day with good intentions, but they become harder to keep once we put our feet on the floor, which is why Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer, which is the only prayer he ever taught us.
It’s filled with rigor and virtue, but it can lose some of its strength because we pray it so often; it can become rote.
In this brief prayer, we are literally asking God for the strength to resist all temptation throughout the day. That means resisting the desire to judge, to gossip, to entertain lustful or greedy thoughts, to steal the last word in an argument, and so on.
Hence, we’re expressing our desire to be pure.
We are also declaring our willingness to forgive everyone who offends us today – that may include the person who cuts us off in the parking lot, who speaks poorly about us at work or online, who takes us for granted, and so on.
If every Christian who prayed the Lord’s Prayer today meant what they said, even with these two petitions – to avoid all temptation and to readily forgive – imagine how different our society would be.
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“I thank you, Father, that I’ve not sinned in any way today… But now I must get out of bed.”
As we pray the Lord’s prayer, may we mean what we say … and do it.
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Image credits: (1) The Lord’s Prayer, Fine Art America (2) The Valley Catholic (3) Information Palace