PRAYER IS CONNECTING AND COMMUNING WITH GOD - Part 2

PRAYER IS CONNECTING AND COMMUNING WITH GOD - Part 2 Fr Luke A Veronis PRAYER is Connecting and Communing with God, and today I offer Part 2 in my sermon series on Prayer. In my last sermon, I mentioned how I want to challenge each of us to reflect on 1) how we pray, 2) why we pray, 3) what we pray, and 4) what the ultimate purpose of prayer is. I hope that by the end of this series we will understand prayer better and begin praying in a more serious, disciplined manner. I want us to discover the joy and blessing of deeply connecting with our Creator and richly communing with the Giver of Life every day through our prayers. We all know that God is love. This is the foundation of our faith. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us,” St John writes. “That God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:7-10). God loves us passionately, extravagantly, and unconditionally and He wants each of us to enter into this intimate relationship with Him, to encounter His divine agape and be “wounded by His love” in the depths of our hearts and souls. Ultimately, He wants us to live in His love. How can we experience such divine love? Well, prayer is the primary way we develop such an intimate relationship with the Lord. Prayer as our connection and communion with God is more essential to who we are than the rhythm of our breathing or the beating of our heart. Without prayer there is no life, no “abundant life” which Jesus promised each of His followers. As human beings, we were created to pray just as we were created to speak and to think. It’s a part of our nature. The human being is best defined not as some logical or tool-making animal but as a person who prays and communes with the Lord, a person created in the image and likeness of God who is capable of offering the world back to God through our prayers of praise and thanksgiving, confession and intercession. Now, it’s not easy to truly pray. The world distracts our minds and fragments our thinking. Our ego misguides our desires. Our intellect fills us with skepticism and tempts us with doubt. How do we connect and commune with God when Satan does all he can to deceive us and turn us away from the Source of Life? Well, the disciples wondered the same thing. They would often watch Jesus go off on His own to pray. They would see Him spend entire nights up in the mountains or out in deserted places praying. Some of them witnessed Jesus in ecstatic communion with His Father, emanating the uncreated divine light as He prayed. So, one day, the disciples asked Jesus, “Teach us to pray.” They understood that they must learn, they must practice, they must develop the spiritual discipline of praying. They understood that the last thing that Satan wants is for God’s people to turn toward Him in prayer. The devil will do whatever he can to divert our attention, to fill our minds and hearts with distractions, to keep us from connecting and communing with God. That’s why when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He responded by teaching them what we call “The Lord’s Prayer,” the “Our Father.” In this prayer, which most of us learned as children, Jesus offered a simple yet profound prayer that taught both how to pray and what to pray. Thus, I want to reflect on the Lord’s Prayer today and help us understand and practice it in a more sincere and devout manner. “Our Father who art in heaven” – The first thing I want us to notice is that we begin our prayer, and the entire first half of the prayer, we focus on God, not ourselves. Yes, we will ask for certain things and take into consideration our own needs in the second half, but we begin prayer by simply acknowledging the Lord Almighty, praising and turning our attention toward Him alone. "OUR FATHER in Heaven" – Take note that the prayer begins not as an individualistic prayer but as a communal prayer, where we join the communion of saints. There is no mention of “I, me, my, mine” in the prayer. Right from the beginning, we understand that we enter into the presence of God not alone, but with the company of both the Church triumphant in heaven along with the people of God on earth. Saint John Chrysostom says, “Jesus teaches to make our prayer common, on behalf of all people ... making supplications for the whole body of humanity and never looking only for one’s own concerns and salvation.”  We are brothers and sisters with all people throughout the world and we acknowledge that in our prayer as we turn to the God of all. By calling God Our Father, we also highlight a fundamental truth of our Christian faith. We have learned that the Lord Almighty, the Alpha and the Omega of Creation, is Someone we may dare to intimately call “Our Father.” He is not only the Infinite Being of Eternity but we have permission to relate with Him as a loving parent who cares for us and loves us more than even the most loving earthly father we can imagine. Our Father IN HEAVEN” - although we turn to God as our loving father, we never forget that He is still “the Lord of heaven and earth.” He is the Creator, the Almighty, the Beginning and End of all history and creation. We must take care not to sentimentalize the whole idea of God as a Heavenly Father, but still acknowledge and approach Him with deep reverence and awe!!! “Hallowed be Your Name.” Our first prayer focusing on glorifying God’s name, acknowledging His Name as holy. “Aghios” means something not of this world, something set apart different and special. We pray that God “enable us to give Him the unique place which His nature and character deserve and demand.” Yet, how do we hallow or sanctify His Name? We do this not only with words, but by understanding who God is as the Creator and Sustainer of Life. We glorify His name by committing our lives to follow Him, to imitate Him by living holy lives ourselves, by living lives worthy of calling God our Father. “Your Kingdom come.” Jesus came to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven as a present reality which we experience here and now. We enter the Kingdom of God at every Divine Liturgy. The Kingdom of God is in our midst. His Kingdom abides in the hearts of each of us, if we are open to it. We invite God to “reign” in the world beginning by reigning in our hearts. We await the eternal kingdom at Christ’s second coming, but we pray that we may fulfil the will of God in our lives by living the reality of His Kingdom here and now. “Your will be done” – Here, maybe is the most difficult part of our prayer. We offer ourselves to God and pray that His will, not our own, be done in the world and in our lives. We pray that we find the strength and wisdom to discern His will and humbly, obediently and cheerfully fulfill it. And of course, we remember that the safest place to be is in the Will of God. How do we determine the Will of God? Through constant prayer and meditation, through silence and attentive listening to the quiet voice of God; through reading Holy Scripture and other spiritual reading; through the voice of other people, spiritual mentors and guides; and through the life of the church. “Give us this day our daily bread” – At the halfway point of the prayer, we turn to our own needs, asking for daily bread. Yet this bread can imply both spiritual and physical sustenance. Jesus said “I am the Bread of Life.” Christ offers Himself in the Eucharist as the supernatural Bread through His Body. We look at reading Holy Scripture as our daily bread. And then, of course, we ask for the physical sustenance we need. Bread is pretty basic. St. John Chrysostom said, “It is not for riches, nor luxurious living, nor costly clothes, nor exquisite food nor any other such thing, but for bread only. And for “daily” bread, so that we receive what we need for today, and then turn to God again tomorrow for what we need. We put our trust in God.” “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” - Here we acknowledge our own sins, shortcomings, failures, and debts, asking for His mercy and grace. We also ask for the ability to forgive others, which we acknowledge comes as we open our hearts to receive the forgiveness of God. Remember, we don’t forgive others because they deserve our mercy; We forgive others because God first forgives us. We pray for His mercy toward us so we can show the same mercy toward others. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, or from the evil one” – We can misunderstand the word “temptation” as if we are asking God not to seduce us into evil. The Greek word πειρασμόν is better translated as test or trial. Thus, we’re asking God to not lead us into the times of trial alone where we might fail but to deliver us during this testing from all that is evil and from the Evil One himself. We are praying for strength to overcome the devil and all his works during our times of trial and temptation. The Lord’s Prayer is the first prayer Jesus offered His followers when He was trying to teach them how to pray. The “Our Father” shows us both how to pray and what to pray for. Through this prayer we connect and commune with God. Praying is not easy to do. We need to learn how to pray and practice again and again. Yet, Jesus offered this prayer as the beginning of learning to prayer. Let us be attentive each time we pray the “Our Father” in the Divine Liturgy, and every day in our prayer rule. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name. Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.