Pope at Audience: ‘Our Father
turns suffering into dialogue’
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| Pope Francis speaks at weekly General Audience.(Vatican Media) |
Continuing his catechesis on the Lord’s prayer at the weekly
General Audience, Pope Francis says the Our Father invites us to turn every
pain and disturbance into a dialogue with God.
By Devin Watkins
Pope Francis continued his reflection on the Our Father
during the Wednesday General Audience, calling it “a bold prayer”.
“I say bold because, if Christ had not suggested it, none of
us would probably have dared to pray to God in this way,” he said.
The Holy Father noted that there are no prefaces to the
prayer. Jesus, he said, invites us to pray directly to the Lord without the
barriers of subjection or fear. “He doesn’t tell us to call God ‘Omnipotent’ or
‘Most High’ or ‘You, who are so distant from us...’ but simply to use the word
‘Father’… expressing closeness and filial trust.”
7 questions for daily life
Pope Francis said the Our Father is made up of seven
questions, saying the number seven represents fullness in the Bible.
He said each of the seven supplications are rooted in the
our experience of daily life and its basic needs. We ask for bread, said the
Pope, to remind us that “prayer starts with life itself.”
“Prayer – Jesus teaches us – begins not when the stomach is
full but wherever any person hungers, cries, fights, suffers, and asks
themselves ‘why’.”
Pope Francis said our first prayer “was the cry that
accompanied our original breath as a new-born child, for it announced our
life’s destiny: our continual hunger and thirst and search for happiness.”
Suffering becomes dialogue
Jesus’ prayer, the Holy Father said, turns every pain and
disturbance into a dialogue with God, rather than snuffing out our humanity or
anesthetizing our suffering.
“Faith,” the Pope said, “is a habit of shouting.”
He gave the example of the Blind Bartimaeus (Mk 10:46-52),
who cries out to Jesus, despite the scolding of those around him, and is
healed. Jesus, Pope Francis said, seems to say that “the decisive factor in his
healing was his prayer – his invocation shouted out in faith – that was
stronger than the good sense of those who would have had him
be quiet.”
An authentic prayer
Finally, Pope Francis warned against embracing the theory
that the prayer of supplication – or asking something for oneself – is a weak
form of faith. “No!” he said, “A faith that asks is authentic. It is
spontaneous and an act of faith in God who is Father”.
“God is truly a Father who has an immense compassion for us
and wants his children to address him directly and without fear.”
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