How do I pray? What do I pray?  

June 19, 2025 – Thursday 11^th Week in Ordinary Time

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061925.cfm)

(Homily on the Fourth Day of Novena for the Feast of Our Mother of Perpetual Help at St. Clement’s Church, Iloilo City)

How do I pray? What do I pray? What are those that I usually ask from the Lord?

Others pray spontaneously asking what they want and desire for themselves and for their loved ones. Others are more comfortable using the memorized prayers as forms of meditation and deeper reflection on the mystery of God.

We too ask many things from the Lord. Others would even have a litany of requests and petitions. And as a form of asking God’s favor we even observe number of days of prayers. This is what we do in observing our Novenas, or the 9 days Misa de Gallo during December, believing that God would grant ones desires and prayers.

In fact, this is what we do now as we prepare for the Feast of Mary, Our Mother of Perpetual Help, on this Fourth Day.

Thus, it would be good to take a look in the way we do our prayers, to look at the intentions we make in our prayers. Let us also include the kind consciousness that we have in our prayers. This is something important because this will help us to evaluate our personal relationship with God and with others.

Now, in today’s Gospel Jesus reminds his disciples of the importance of prayer and also of the importance of the kind of consciousness in their prayers.

Jesus mentioned about the way the pagans prayed. These pagans loved to use many words in their prayers. They believed that it was in that way that they would be able to get the attention of their gods and goddesses. At the same time, pagans believed it would appease them. They believed that these gods and goddesses were unforgiving, impulsive and frightening. These pagans babbled in their prayers in order to get the favor from these difficult and terrifying deities.

However, Jesus reminds his disciples that our God is not like that. God is not vengeful. God is not inconsistent. Our God is not terrifying. The Lord God is rather loving and forgiving. Hence, to use many words would not be necessary because God knows the desires of our heart.

Moreover, as Jesus reminds his disciples, he also tells us now that our prayers are not meant to appease an angry and hateful god or to gain favor from a terrifying god. This also means that the content of our prayers should not be self-centered. To pray is not just to ask something for ourselves but also for others. That is why Jesus taught us his own prayer. His prayer expressed intimacy and closeness with the Father in heaven.

This prayer starts with these two words, OUR FATHER. It did not say “My Father” and not even “Their Father.” This tells us that when we pray, we always remember others. We are always together as people, as brothers and sisters. Our relationship with God though can be personal but it is also founded in our community. That is why it starts with “OUR” because this includes you and me and everyone else.

This prayer (Our Father/Lord’s Prayer) tells us that God is a Father. God relates to us personally. God is not somewhere out there who is so far away from us but God is here with us. God as our Father is, indeed, loving and faithful to us. This is evident at how the Lord God continually revealed the divine presence to us throughout our human history. This means also that we are invited to seek God’s will and God’s desire not just our desire. Most of the time, when we pray we only think of what we want and desire but we forget to ask, what is it that you desire for me Lord?

It invites us also to become dependent on Him because He is generous and faithful to us. To pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” means to be more focused of today, this day not tomorrow because tomorrow has not yet come. Certainly, we can be too anxious of what will happen tomorrow that it will prevent us to see what is more important today. Thus, Jesus invites us to be more contented of today and to ask sustenance enough for today.

Notice also that in this prayer, it recognizes our sinfulness and need to be forgiven. It is necessary that we become humble and ask God’s mercy because this is the way that we make ourselves open to God’s grace. When we remain arrogant and unrepentant of our sins, then we prevent God to transform us and prevent others to come into our life.

And finally, we make ourselves aware that there is also the presence of the evil one around us. The evil one constantly tempts us to move away from God. The evil one wants us to cut our relationship from the Lord, thus from the grace of God.

The evil will always try allure us to think that it is better not to pray and that we do not need God. The evil will seduce us to think that we can do everything in our power without the help of God and that we do no need to think of others but ourselves alone. Be careful then of these temptations.

With all of these, we find Mary, Our Mother of Perpetual Help as our guide and best example. Mary showed us how such intimacy with the Lord makes us open and welcoming to the will of God. Mary showed us that to completely trust in the Lord is to make our heart full of love. Mary also showed us that by choosing the Lord, evil has no power over us.

Being made aware of the consciousness behind the Lord’s Prayer and of Mary’s presence in our life and faith, we too shall grow in our relationship with God and with one another. We may become less self-centered and self-serving and rather become self-giving and life-giving as God desires us to be in our homes and communities. Kabay pa.