A Thursday Reflection

Today’s Gospel is another one of those Gospels where we find Jesus at prayer. It’s another one of those Gospels where he is praying for us. He did that well! He prayed for us always even until the point of death on the cross. But how often do we pray? Jesus constantly urges us to use the greatest power He gave us: the power to address Him in prayer!

Jesus prayed a lot! We see him praying at His Baptism, before he picked His twelve Apostles, and before teaching his own disciples how to pray. Now, knowing what we do about Jesus’ approach to prayer, we could safely say that he prayed for discernment, for the ability to know God’s will and do it. Then he acted!

It sometimes happens that our prayer becomes a request from God. It’s like we expect this tiny little package of something or other- like a job or relief from sickness. We think this prayer-parcel will come all wrapped up in a bow, or perhaps even be delivered by UPS. But that’s rarely what we get; we have to do something as well.

Perhaps we need to fall back once again to the example of Jesus and understand prayer as a two-part process. We can and should pray for discernment- for the ability to know God’s will in our lives and in our world. That is, we have to listen to God. Then comes the hard part. We can’t stand around waiting for some “package” to fall out of the sky, or come via the UPS truck, that’s not how prayer works. We have to do something too!