Pope at Angelus: the Our Father
is the synthesis of every prayer
At the Angelus, Pope Francis reflects on the Our Father,
“one of the most precious gifts” Jesus has left us.
By Christopher Wells
In his reflection on Sunday’s Gospel, Pope Francis said that
the disciples wanted “to experience the same ‘quality’” of prayer was present
in Jesus’ relationship with the Father. “They could see that prayer was an
essential dimension in the life of their Master,” he said, noting that “each of
His important actions was characterized by extended periods of prayer.” They
recognized, too, that Jesus "did not pray like the other masters of the
time”; rather, “His prayer is an intimate link with the Father.”
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, the
Pope said, the Lord did not simply “give an abstract definition of prayer, or
teach an effective technique for praying in order to ‘obtain’ something.”
Instead, Jesus shared with them His own experience of prayer, “putting them
directly in contact with the Father, and arousing in them a longing for a
personal relationship with Him.”
This, Pope Francis said, “is the novelty of Christian prayer:
It is a dialogue between people who love one another, a dialogue based on
trust, sustained by listening, and open to the commitment to solidarity.”
The prayer Jesus taught them, the Our Father, “is one of the
most precious gifts left to us by the divine Master during His earthly
mission,” the Pope said. With this prayer, Jesus teaches us “to enter into the
Fatherhood of God, and shows us the way to enter into prayerful and direct
dialogue with Him, through the way of filial trust.” The Our Father, he said,
“is the synthesis of every prayer, and we always address it to the Father in
communion with our brothers and sisters.”
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