THE OTHER SHOE

This post is Part Two of last week's reflection on God and Prayer. In that post I quoted Fr. Francois Varillon's objections to our thinking of God as the Universal Fixer whom we call on only when we admit that we can't do a certain thing by ourselves. But we mustn't understand this to mean that we should never ask God for anything in prayer. So, let me drop the other shoe concerning what we traditionally call "prayer of petition".

First of all, Jesus himself tells us  "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Mt 7:7). But Jesus also teaches us the right frame of mind to bring when approaching prayer. One time his disciples noticed him praying fervently by himself. Afterward one of them asked him "Lord, teach us to pray." His response, you remember, was "When you pray, pray like this: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ..." 

Let me quote a footnote from the New American Bible:  "In answer to their question, Jesus presents them with an example of a Christian communal prayer that stresses the fatherhood of God and acknowledges him as the one to whom the Christian disciple owes daily sustenance (Lk 11:3), forgiveness (Lk 11:4), and deliverance from the final trial (Lk 11:4)."

You can't miss Jesus' starting point for prayer: We are not entering into a business transaction with some Supernatural Repairman with whom we negotiate a price for some service or other. Rather we are to pray to "our Father." Our Lord immediately puts prayer in the context of a family.

In a family we don't negotiate or contract with a parent or a sister or brother, but instead we simply ask, "Could you please help me with this?" or "Would you mind giving me a hand?" So think about the child Jesus growing up in the holy family's home in Nazareth. (By the way, today, March 19, is, appropriately, the feast of Saint Joseph,) The Christ child must have asked his mother and his father Joseph for things the way any child would.  

If the human Jesus first experienced "asking his father" in the context of a loving family where he was confident of being loved and accepted, then we can begin to see the kind of asking that Jesus is talking about when he teaches us to pray "Our father," and when he promises that if we ask, we will receive. 

Jesus' God is not a repairman with whom we negotiate for help, nor an accountant who is keeping a carefully detailed balance sheet of our sins to see if we are worthy of being loved. Jesus' God is his "Abba," "my father and your father. (Jn 20:17)" And our Lord clearly wants to share that relationship with us: "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us (Jn 17:20-21)."

So much for the "useful God" and "useful prayer!"

Happy Saint Joseph's Day!