Prayer that follows the Gospel - Matthew 6:7-15

Within the Christian community, one can find some diversity among the varied approaches that certain groups and individuals have toward worship, devotion and prayer. Today's readings provide us with some tools for discerning the right path to express our faith in God.  As one who grew up with a Catholic dad and an Episcopalian mom, the influencers of my faith have been, in some cases, quite varied in their approaches.  So the exercise of discerning (what Paul calls in today's First Reading) our "sincere and pure devotion" is a particularly interesting topic for me.

 

Paul warns against being led astray by those either adding to or taking away from the essential message of the gospel. Any form of heretical teaching, be it for political reasons, personal agendas, or self-centeredness takes us away from the core essential truth of Scripture which tells us that we are all sinners who are redeemed by God's grace.

 

In our reading today, Paul defends his ministry and apostleship.  He tells us that it is not his eloquence, preaching style, giftedness, or strength of personality that qualifies him as a minister of the gospel.  It is his life, his example, and love for the Church that sets him apart, and that ultimately proves his being an apostle for Christ.

 

In the couple of verses that go beyond where our First Reading ends, Paul warns the church to be aware of false prophets within their midst. He says that these false prophets only masquerade as apostles of Christ.  His warning is that we have to very careful of who we listen to and how we discern the message they are telling us.

 

So then, with this backdrop of Paul saying: look out for heretical teaching, be wary of "personality driven" preaching and false prophets, we have Jesus in the Gospel setting us straight on the proper mindset to express our faith in prayer to God. The confluence of Paul's warning of what to avoid, and Jesus' admonition of what to pursue should give us some renewed direction in discerning the right pathway to the kingdom. 

 

The first two words of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father", in and of themselves set us in the right trajectory.  As we think about it, the word "I", or any other reference to self, is not a part of the prayer. The adjective, "our" places the accent on the awareness that we all belong to the great human family and this brings us to greater intimacy with God.

 

Conversely, if we are drawn to messages that take us away from this sense of universal fraternity provided in the Our Father, we become vulnerable to the all too common "me and my God" approach to faith, which in reality, is the type of faith that Paul warns against. 

 

The gravitational pull of pride can easily take us down that path to "my Father" instead of "our Father", and make us vulnerable to the false prophets that do preach to that vulnerability- the gospel of prosperity, the gospel of forgiveness without repentance, the gospel that excludes mention of sin and suffering simply because sin and suffering don't sell. The communal nature of the Catholic faith and its fidelity to the fundamental truths as expressed in the Gospels- particularly the one we heard today, should reinforce our commitment to the Catholic doctrine.

 

But Catholic doctrine and the truths to which it holds don't in and of themselves inoculate us from straying from these words our savior gave us.  Discernment is an every day challenge for each of us.  We need to ask ourselves, are we closer to an "Our Father" prayer life or something closer to a "My Father" version?  This type of discerning is something we need to learn, practice and apply, no matter what age or level of commitment to our faith at which we currently see ourselves.

 

When we pray, “Our Father who art in heaven,” who do we include in our “our”?  As we think more deeply about his instruction, the more we come to realize that Jesus wanted us to pray not just for ourselves but for each other, our family, our church, our communities and the whole world, including those we may disagree with politically, religiously, culturally, etc.  The prophet Malachi asked, "Have we not all the one Father?  Has not the one God created us?"

 

We need to ask ourselves, how seriously do we devote ourselves to God's hopes and dreams, making use of the opportunities he provides for our spiritual growth and for our calling to serve others in his family?

 

So, we pray today that the Holy Spirit will help us discern our faith more deeply.  We pray that as we recite the Lord's Prayer in the future that we'll do more than just say it.  We'll put more emphasis on our brothers and sisters, some that we know but those that we don't know, as well.  And we pray that this prayer, and all of our prayers, bring us to a more intimate relationship with our creator and the sure hope that we'll one day be delivered from this world to the next!