Gospel: Luke 11:1-4

Jesus is absorbed in prayer, a little apart from his disciples. When he had finished, one of them said to him: "Lord, teach us to pray". Jesus simply said: "When you pray, say: "Father' ", and he taught the Our Father, taking it from his own prayer in which he himself spoke to God, his Father. St Luke passes the Our Father to us in a shorter form than that found in the Gospel according to St Matthew, which has entered into the common usage. 

 

These are the first words of Sacred Scripture, we learn in our childhood. They reveal that we are not ready-made children of God from the start, but that we are meant to become so increasingly by growing more and more deeply in communion with Jesus. 

 

This prayer also accepts and expresses human material and spiritual needs: "Give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins". It is precisely because of the needs and difficulties of every day that Jesus exhorts us forcefully: "I tell you, ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find… " (Lk 11: 9-10). 

 

St Teresa of Avila addressed an invitation to her sisters: we must "beseech God to deliver us from these perils forever and to keep us from all evil! And despite our desire for this may not be perfect, let us strive to make the petition. What does it cost us to ask it, since we ask it of the One who is so powerful?". 

 

Every time we say the Our Father our voices mingle with the voice of the Church, for those who pray are never alone.