Sunday 17 of the Year - cycle C

Lord, teach us how to pray...

When his disciples ask Jesus how to pray, he teaches them the prayer we all know by heart - the Our Father. But those first two words contain the most unusual and unexpected notion - that we should address the Lord our God as Father.

Jesus calls him Father because he is the Anointed One. His relationship with God the Father is unique. Why does he instruct us to call God our Father when we pray?

I think it is because we are united to the Lord by faith and baptism. We are his body. Our union with God the Father through him means that we are all adopted sons and daughters, inheritors with him of the Kingdom.

We share the same Spirit, who prays in us, when we do not know how to pray. We pray as Christ prays. It is as if Christ himself were praying to his father through us. We offer him our hearts with Jesus, through Jesus and in Jesus.

As St Paul says, we have the Spirit of sonship in us which cries out ‘Abba, Father!’ Prayer for us is simply allowing the Christ life inside us to flow back to the Father which it does naturally. Perhaps prayer is not so much the raising of the heart and soul to God, but the rising of the heart and soul. Not lifting a weight, but the letting go of a helium balloon which naturally soars! Perhaps we are closer to God than we think....

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