Wednesday 6 October 2021

...a pilgrim's prayer journal...

 '...your kingdom come...'

Luke 11:1-4

When we pray the words of the Our Father, that Jesus gave his disciples when they asked him to teach them to pray, we are using his words.  This seems an obvious and rather banal statement.  Do I usually stop and realise that Jesus himself prayed the Psalms, knew them and loved them?  Do I stop and think that he gave us the words of the Our Father himself?  In Luke it doesn't say 'thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven' - but we know Jesus did say 'thy will be done' - at least in the Garden of Olives.  We can really unite our prayer to he heart if we consciously say his own words as if giving him back something he has given us from his own lips.

We ask him to 'pray in our praying' as we pray rounds prayers of the Divine Will devotions given to Luisa Piccarreta - if we give him his words in prayer as a gift surely we are praying in his holy will.  Also we're not just asking for ourselves but for the whole world, asking his blessing and the coming of his kingdom for the whole world. Using his own words expands our heart in prayer and leads us away from the risk of becoming caught up in our own worries, wants and fears.

It strikes me that these are the words he gave us himself, the words he would have us use.  He said that his mssion was to do the will of his father.  We want to learn how to live in the Divine Will - we dont want to just be 'doers' of God's will, simple executors - we want to embrace his will, live it and live in it.  If we pray Jesus' own words into everything we do and all that we are living and being, then surely we are a step closer to 'putting on the mind of Christ' as St. Paul suggests? We can learn to live our 'yes' to him in joy and in the way he would have us live it.

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