Pater Noster

by

Sunday, 28 July 2013 : 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God who is our Father is kind, and He is loving, because He is love, and true love personified, in all its perfection. The Lord cannot deny Himself, and He loves everyone without exception. This love He had poured down upon the world through the sending of His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Messiah, our Saviour. And to add to that, the numerous reminders He had sent us and His people, Israel, through the prophets and their prophecies and the visions and revelations He had given them.

He loves us all and He will surely listen to our needs, and He truly knows all that we need. That is why we should never worry, and instead we all should put our full trust in Him, for He is a loving God, who is just and righteous in all the things He does. But remember, brothers and sisters, that He is also an avenging God, just as He is loving, because He hates sin first of all things, and all things evil and abhorring in His eyes. If we sin and do not repent, we will face the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were wiped out from the face of the earth for their sins.

But our Father in heaven does not just want empty worship and prayers either, as many of us would certainly had done in the past, paying lip service to the Lord who loves us. He wants from us our hearts, our full attention and dedication, just as He Himself had paid full attention to all of us sinners, all these while. We are like lost sheep to Him, whom He cannot ignore, and He would use all in His power to bring us back, like a shepherd going all out to find even one lost sheep.

So that we would not be lost, like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were lost in their debauchery and their sinful lives, where sin had blinded and deafened them to the Lord their God, He had sent us His only Son, Jesus Christ, to be a new light, a new hope for all of us. And one of the things that He had done to make sure that we will not be lost forever was that to teach us how to pray, how to pray to the Lord our God with all our hearts, our minds, and our full attention, that our prayer is indeed truly a prayer, pure and beautiful in the eyes and ears of the Lord.

To pray is to communicate with our Lord, and that is the key essence of what a prayer truly is. To pray is not to bring in endless litanies of requests and wishes, or bugging our Lord for His help whenever we are in dire straits. To pray is not to turn to the Lord only when we are in difficulties and in need of great help, or in the state of danger. Indeed, as the Lord has told us, and Christ His Son has taught us through His disciples, that prayer must be done, at all times, with a sincere and pure heart.

That was why Christ taught His disciples the Lord’s Prayer, the very prayer that came out of the mouth of the Word of God, Christ Himself. This prayer is a perfect prayer, the most sincere and purest of all prayers that are ever be in this world, be it on earth or in heaven. The Lord’s Prayer, which we recite and pray every Mass and most likely pray every day, is the model prayer for all of us. It is a simple yet a clear-cut prayer, straight to the point in its meaning, and pure in its intentions.

Yes, a prayer must always begin with glorifying the Lord our God and praising His Name, and all His love and kindness that He had shown us, all His beloved children. A prayer must never be a litany of requests and petitions, but indeed, it must be a humble prayer, showing our sincerity and humility before the throne of God, for we are nothing and full of sin, and yet He rescued us and made us whole and pure once again, with none other than the Blood of His own Son’s sacrifice on the cross.

In a prayer, we have to listen to God just as God listens to us. A prayer is a two-way communication between God and man, the link between our Creator and us His creations. He speaks to us in mysterious ways and in the depth and the silence of our hearts. If we keep our hearts closed to Him, we will not be able to listen to Him. It is often that we have to cast away our pride and sinfulness, and the deafening noise of the world, so that we will be able to listen to our Lord, and communicate sincerely with Him through prayer.

That is why brothers and sisters, whenever we pray, we should close ourselves from the world, and take away any form of distractions which may distract us and disturb our precious link with the Lord our God. Do it in silence and in the privacy of our rooms, and it is also important that we make use of every opportunity we have to be silent, even at a workplace, to listen to the Lord speaking to us. Even that is prayer, brothers and sisters in Christ!

That is also why in the Mass, it is important to have silent moments, after the readings, during the time after we receive the Lord in the Holy Communion, and even at times before the Mass starts or after the Mass has finished. These are precious moments we can use to communicate with our God, especially if we are busy with our work in any other times. It is important, brothers and sisters, that we respond to the Lord’s calls and know what He wants us to do with our lives. Be like the prophet Samuel, who in his youth was called by the Lord and he answered to it, and listened to the word of God.

As I had mentioned, God is merciful and loving just as He is just and a punishing God. If we ask and knock at His door, He will surely listen to us and consider our repentance. You see, brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord does not take pleasure in seeing the punishment and suffering of His children, and He certainly does not enjoy punishing us for our sins. Indeed, it caused Him great pain to punish mankind for their sins and their rebellions, and it is especially hard for the Lord to punish His own chosen people of Israel, when they erred and preferred the pagan gods and idols, and their constant rebellions during the journey from Egypt and after they had had the Promised Land as their own.

That is why, in our prayer, what is important is for us to recognise our own weaknesses, our own sinfulness, and our own unworthiness, that we lay them all bare before the Lord our God, that the Lord who sees all, will see our sincerity and the sincerity of our repentance, our contrite hearts, the true offering from us that He desires. Open the doors of our heart to Him, just as He opened His doors for us to enter. That we may be in Him just as He is in us.

Do not fear God and His punishment, but be courageous and approach the throne of God, the throne of mercy. For the Lord is the Divine Mercy who will embrace sinners and those who sincerely acknowledge their faults and seek to be healed. For Christ had come to save sinners and those who are sick from sin, and bring them back to health once again, that is a life of grace in God. However, He cannot do much help to us, if we ourselves did not open the doors of our heart for Him to come in.

He knocks at our doors too, brothers and sisters in Christ, just as we knock at His doors in heaven, to give Him our prayers and petitions. In the same way, the Lord too longs to speak to us all in our hearts. That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, harden not our hearts the way the Pharaoh and the people of Israel had once hardened their hearts, but open it, for the Lord who wants to come in and dwell within us. Listen to Him and do what He wants us to do, and our lives will be blessed.

May the Lord who saved us from death deliver us from evil and his corruptions, that we may not suffer the same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah, where not even ten righteous ones could be found. May He protect us from harm and bring us to the life eternal that He had promised us through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord who speaks to us in silence helps us to gain greater understanding in the importance of prayer in our lives, so that we will always be attuned to Him, in line with His will, and always ever be in His grace. God bless us all. Amen!

by

Sunday, 28 July 2013 : 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Luke 11 : 1-13

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” And Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say this :

Father, may Your Name be held holy,

May Your kingdom come;

give us each day the kind of bread we need,

and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive all who do us wrong;

and do not bring us to the test.”

Jesus said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to his house in the middle of the night and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine who is travelling has just arrived, and I have nothing to offer him.’

Maybe your friend will answer from inside, ‘Do not bother me now; the door is locked, and my children and I are in bed, so I cannot get up and give you anything.’ But I tell you, even though he will not get up and attend to you because you are a friend, yet he will get up because you are a brother to him, and he will give you all you need.

And so I say to you, ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For the one who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened.

If your child asks for a fish, will you give him a snake instead? And if your child asks for an egg, will you give him a scorpion? If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.”

by

Thursday, 20 June 2013 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today in the Gospel reading, we heard the very prayer that all of us should know by heart, the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father, Pater Noster, the prayer that we always say in every celebration of the Mass, the prayer that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught us through His disciples, and which show the perfect sincerity in prayer, and indeed, the perfect prayer itself, how a prayer should indeed be prayed.

Prayer should not be a litany of demands and wishes, as I am sure many of us would consciously or unconsciously do. That in prayer, we always put, “We want this, Lord; We need this, Lord; I hope that You can help me in this, Lord; please help us, o Lord”. No, not that it is bad to ask Him all these things, providing that we do so politely and in a sincere love for Him, and not to consider and look at God as a ‘magic genie lamp’ that can fulfill all your wishes with a single whim.

Prayer is a perfect way of connecting with the Lord our God, as a two-way communication between us and our Creator and our Lord. Yes, brothers and sisters in Christ, prayer is a two-way communication, and therefore we should not convert it into a one-way request or demand from us, in which we alone speak and the Lord listens. No, in fact, in prayer, we should take a moment of silence, to let the Lord speak to us. Yes, He speaks to us in a subtle way, in our hearts, and too often, as we live in this ‘noisy’ world, the words that God speaks to us become lost.

A good prayer life will strengthen us, brothers and sisters in Christ, and it will bring us ever closer to God, who is our Father. Why is God our Father? That is because Christ is the Son of God, His very Word, through whom God created the world and all creation. And because Christ had descended unto this world, becoming man like us, and was born as a humble baby in Bethlehem through the Virgin Mary, He became one like us, and therefore, all of us too become the children of God, because Christ is our brother. God is also our Father because He created us, gave us life, and cared for all of us with His perfect love.

We should always give thanks for our Lord’s kindness and love for us, because He provides for all of us with all things He had created for us in creation. He gave us all that we need to live. He has given all that we need to live, our ‘daily bread’, and that is why, we do not need to worry about so many things in our lives. God has taken care of what we truly need in our lives. All things that come beyond these are born out of our greed and our desires, our natural desire to have more and more and never to feel enough.

In prayer too, we need to remember to forgive, just as Christ had told His disciples, ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ That is another important essence of prayer. We do not just pray for our loved ones and for ourselves, for indeed, those who are good and in good grace of the Lord has enough grace for themselves, though it is indeed good to pray for them, for everyone. But what is better is that in our prayer, we should forgive one another, especially forgive the faults and sins of those who had caused us grief and hurt, either physically, emotionally, or in other means that they had brought suffering upon us.

We too are not out of faults and blame, and surely at some point of time in our lives, we had done things that cause hurt and suffering for others, and therefore, we too, should ask for the same forgiveness for our own faults, just as we need to forgive others. The Lord who sees our love and our compassion for our fellow brethren, and our merciful heart will be pleased with us, and will grant us an abundance of graces.

These are the things that should be within our prayers, a humble request for the Lord to forgive us from our faults and our sins, that we be made worthy of Him, and at the same time, asking for forgiveness of our own brethren and our enemies who had inflicted the same suffering upon us. Through forgiveness we will be forgiven, and through love we will be loved as well. Jesus Himself had said that we should forgive one another first before we give our offering to the Lord, so that we will truly bring to the Lord a worthy offering, that is our loving heart, untainted by enmity and hatred.

Let us reflect on the words of the Lord’s Prayer, that from now on, we will truly mean what we say. Too often we just mumble the words of the prayer, just because we had memorised it completely by heart. But do we then mean what we said? Do we understand the meaning of the words that had left our mouths? Do we practice what we had said in our prayer? Let us take this moment to pledge ourselves to God, that from now on we will love Him as our Father, and will truly take every moment of prayer as precious moments during which time we are able to communicate directly with Him.

Do not let ourselves be tempted by the evil one too, brothers and sisters. That is why we pray, that the Lord will deliver us with His power from the power of the evil one, Satan, the old serpent, who tricked our ancestors, and made them to fall into sin and death. Christ had come to free us from the chains of sin, and He delivered us from the slavery of evil, just as He had brought the people of Israel from the tyranny of Pharaoh and Egypt. That was what St. Paul in the first reading today warned us as well, that we will always stay vigilant against the works of the evil one, that we will not falter and fall like Adam and Eve did.

Pray with our hearts, brothers and sisters in Christ, and do not just pray with our mouths. Pray often, and have a healthy prayer life, and keep our hearts and minds completely focused on the Lord, every time that we pray. Remember always the sacrifice of Christ our Lord, through which we gain redemption and salvation, every time we pray. That when we pray, we no longer think of ourselves or our own selfish desires and greatness, but think of God alone, and solely having the intention to praise Him and give Him thanks for all eternity. God bless us all. Amen.

by

Thursday, 20 June 2013 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Matthew 6 : 7-15

When you pray, do not use a lot of words, as the pagans do, for they believe that the more they say, the more chance they have of being heard. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need, even before you ask Him.

This, then, is how you should pray :

Our Father in heaven,

holy be Your Name,

Your Kingdom come,

Your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts, just as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us.

Do not bring us to the test, but deliver us from the evil one.

If you forgive other their wrongdoings, your Father in heaven will also forgive yours. If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive you either.

by

Tuesday, 19 February 2013 : 1st Week of Lent (Scripture Reflection)

Jesus, who is the Word of God made flesh, as mentioned in the beginning of the Gospel of John, has indeed come forth from the Lord who is our Father, God the Father, and down to us, on earth, as one of us, the mankind, save without sins unlike us. The Word of God was with the Father before creation, and before all ages, and is part and indivisible with the Father in the unity of the Holy Trinity with the Holy Spirit, one God, the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who saved the people of Israel and brought them out of the land of Egypt into the promised land, and promised salvation to them through the being of the Messiah.

Prophets had risen and announced the future coming of Christ, who is the Messiah. Who can guess that this Messiah is none other than that Word of God Himself, as prophesied by the prophet Isaiah in the first reading today. Through Him, indeed, that He accomplished much for the Lord, His Father, and the purpose for which He has been sent into this world, He obediently followed unto His own death on the cross for our own redemption for sin and death.

Remember that in Creation, the Lord spoke, and the Word of God made the creation manifest, from light, to the skies, to the sun, the moon, and the stars, to all the animals, and finally to all of us, His beloved children. This Word of God is Christ who is one with the Father and indivisible in Holy Trinity, with the Holy Spirit whom gave us life, just as God breathed life into the dust that was Adam, this life-giving breath is the Holy Spirit, one with the Father in the sacred and indivisible Holy Trinity. Three equal and distinct part of the one, true God, but at the same time indivisible and perfect in unity.

Then, finally, through Jesus, that Word of God, and the Son of God, who came down through Mary to become humble man like us, we too, have been made the children of God, for Jesus is our Brother, and just as He call God the Father, His Father, we too call God our Father.

This is the centre of the very prayer, the perfect prayer that Christ taught His disciples, and through them, this prayer, descended to us, who know the prayer as the Pater Noster, or the Lord’s Prayer, or ‘Our Father’, whom we all should know by heart, since we always pray it during every Mass that we celebrate. This prayer is not a prayer of selfishness, and not a prayer of incessant requests, but it is a pure prayer coming out of the very Word of God, Christ, the Messiah, that begins by glorifying God, His Holy Name and His magnificence in heaven and earth, as Lord over all creations, over angels and mankind alike, and in humility asks the Lord for just what is enough, our daily bread, that we can be satisfied enough, and have enough, but not excessively.

Then, what is even more important, as this is tied with the message of Love, the commandments of Love that Christ brought, to perfect the Laws and the commandments given to Moses, is the prayer for forgiveness, but which requires us, to first take the action to forgive others, out of love. For it is indeed very difficult to forgive, and it is our very human nature that tempted us to hate, and to attack others who had hurt us, either physically or mentally. However, this hatred and violence merely lead to even more hatred and violence, and even death, through an endless cycle of hate, suffering, sin, and death. Christ taught us to take the courageous first step to reject Satan and his temptations for us to enter this cycle of death, and be courageous to forgive those who has done bad things to us.

For this creates a new cycle, a cycle of love, in which, we counter not the assaults others made with hatred, and even more assaults on our own, but we surrender ourselves entirely to God’s love, and let God’s love take over all our being, and make us an instrument of His love, through forgiving others, even those who had hurt us the most. This is why we pray that we will not fall into temptation, and ask the Lord to help us from the evil one, Satan, who always tries to pit one man against another.

Let us today reflect on the words of the Word of God, who is Christ, the Word of God made flesh through Mary, and through whose ministry, He returned to the Lord not empty-handed, but brought with Him the entire human race, saved from the slavery of Satan and sin. Let us be brave and fill ourselves with God’s love, and faith in God, that we are able to take the courageous step to start forgiving those who are our enemies, those who had hurt us, those who had persecuted, or neglected us. That in doing so, we know that not only that our sins, the sins of those who hated and persecuted us, are forgiven, but that we know that we have a part in the Messianic mission of the Word of God, whom since creation has loved us with the Father, and will always love us, through His death, and until His second coming, when all creations will be made good once again.

May God, our Father, bless us with grace this day, and forever after. May God be with all of us always, especially at the time of our greatest need. Amen.

by

Tuesday, 19 February 2013 : 1st Week of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Matthew 6 : 7-15

When you pray, do not use a lot of words, as the pagans do, for they believe that the more they say, the more chances they have of being heard. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need, even before you ask Him.

This, then, is how you should pray :

Our Father in heaven, holy be Your Name.

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts, just as we have forgiven, those who are in debt to us.

Do not bring us to the test, but deliver us from the evil one.

If you forgive others their wrongdoings, your Father in heaven will also forgive yours. If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive you either.