As Jesuits, prayer is one of the topics that we are frequently questioned about. People frequently manifest the desire for a richer, more fulfilling prayer life, but often aren’t quite sure where to start. It should be at least mildly reassuring that the disciples of Jesus had many of the same questions. In the Gospel today, some the disciples directly ask, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”
The response that Christ provides contains the framework for the Our Father, but perhaps most significantly, it also lays out the foundation for cultivating relationship with God through daily conversation. We rightly begin with gratitude and praise for the gift of creation and our own existence. Recognizing that God always wills our highest good, we ask that God’s will be done in our lives and in the world. We ask God to provide for our creaturely temporal needs. Even more importantly, we also ask for the fulfillment of our spiritual needs. We pray for forgiveness and mercy for the times that we have fallen, and we pledge to show mercy and charity to others in return.
Prayer is ultimately conversation with God. There are many valid forms of prayer, but the ultimate objective of all these is the same: to properly conform our hearts to a disposition of receptivity so that we make ourselves capable of hearing God’s voice and receiving the gifts that he ardently desires to give us in the course of our daily lives.