Lord, teach us how to pray?

I was once the president of the catholic society (now consider myself as the advisor to the society) in my campus. All of us (the members and I) will meet up every week to have prayers & devotion( eg: rosary, novena to the mother of perpetual help). Before we start our meeting on a particular day, usually, we will start it with an opening prayer. I think most of the students don't really like to lead in prayer, regardless of whether that is an opening prayer or closing prayer. The reason being is that most of us do not know what to pray or what to say in front of the crowd. Same like me, as a facilitator, when I first stand in front of the crowd to lead in prayer. I think most of us are facing the same problem together with the disciples in those day. we have the same commonality that "WE DO NOT KNOW HOW TO PRAY". Precisely, I guess most of us do not know what is the correct word that we should utter or using in our prayer. We want to pray, but how can we pray?

In today's gospel," Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”  He said to them, “When you pray, say:Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us to the final test.” (LK11:1-4)

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray he gave them the disciple's prayer, what we call the Our Father or Lord's Prayer. What does Jesus' prayer tell us about God and about ourselves? First, it tells us that God is both Father in being the Creator and Author of all that he has made, the first origin of everything and transcendent authority, and he is eternally Father by his relationship to his only begotten Son who, reciprocally is Son only in relation to his Father (Matthew 11:27). All fatherhood and motherhood is derived from him (Ephesians 3:14-15). In the Lord Jesus Christ we are spiritually reborn and made new, and we become the adopted children of God (John 1:12-13; 3:3).

Jesus teaches us to address God as "our Father" and to confidently ask him for the things we need to live as his sons and daughters. We can approach God our Father with confidence and boldness because Jesus Christ has opened the way to heaven for us through his death and resurrection. When we ask God for help, he fortunately does not give us what we deserve. Instead, he responds with grace and mercy. He is kind and forgiving towards us and he expects us to treat our neighbor the same. We can pray with expectant faith because our heavenly Father loves us and treats us as his children. He delights to give us what is good. His love and grace transforms us and makes us like himself. Through his grace and power we can love and serve one another as Jesus taught with grace, mercy, and loving-kindness. 

Now, do you treat others as they deserve, or do you treat them as the Lord would with grace and mercy? Jesus' prayer includes an injunction that we must ask God to forgive us in proportion as we forgive those who have wronged us. Are you ready to forgive as Jesus forgives?

If a neighbor can be imposed upon and coerced into giving bread in the middle of the night, will not God, our heavenly Father and provider, also treat us with kind  and generous care no matter how troubling or inconvenient the circumstances might appear? Jesus states emphatically, How much more will the heavenly Father give! St. Augustine of Hippo (340-425 AD) reminds us that "God, who does not sleep and who awakens us from sleep that we may ask, gives much more graciously." The Lord Jesus assures us that we can bring our needs to our heavenly Father who is always ready to give not only what we need, but more than we can ask. God gives the best he has. He freely pours out the blessing of his Holy Spirit upon us so that we may be filled with the abundance of his provision. Do you approach your heavenly Father with confidence in his mercy and kindness towards you?

Pope John Paul II, at the end of his first encyclical letter, The Redeemer of Man, maintained that our prayer must be "great, intense, and growing." He also emphasized that the Lord wants our prayer to be combined with fasting, for the Lord has decided at this time to make prayer and fasting the first and most effective weapons against our culture of death (The Gospel of Life, 100). According to these criteria, is your prayer life satisfactory to the Lord?

To pray as the Lord wants us to pray, we must see God as our loving Father. That is the first thing Jesus taught us about prayer (see Lk 11:2). We must be aware that our Father sees our prayer and fasting (Mt 6:6, 18). Abraham stopped short in his prayer for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to be spared destruction. His prayer was limited because he:

• wasn't sure whether God was just (see Gn 18:25),
• was even less sure of God's mercy, and
• projected his own interior conflicts onto God and thereby accused God of being impatient (Gn 18:30) and angry (Gn 18:32).

Abraham had little concept of God being a loving Father, and he prayed and did not pray accordingly.

We who are in Christ can and must pray always with loving, tender confidence in our Father. In that way, we will pray as we ought (Rm 8:26).