Praying the Our Father
by Fr. David M. Knight
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Thirty-Second Week of the Year
Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr
Ti 2:1-8, 11-14/Lk 17:7-10 (Lectionary 492)
Titus 2:1-14: The virtues Paul urges sound at first like standard human behavior except for two things: 1. We should “behave in ways that befit those who belong to God,” and 2. We are motivated by desire that “the word of God not fall into disrepute.”
This raises both the standard and the ante: unless our style of life is divine, the work of evangelization will fail.
Evangelization depends on witness; and witness depends on a lifestyle that raises “irresistible questions” in people’s minds that cannot be answered without the Gospel. Where converts are not coming into the Church in droves (or worse: Catholics are leaving the Church like rats deserting a sinking ship), the answer probably lies there: we are not showing in our lives the special, striking holiness appropriate to people who “belong to God.” How can we pray, “Thy Kingdom come!” if we are not showing by our behavior what it will look like when it does?
All begins with our sense of identity. Praying “Our Father, who art in heaven” should remind us we are divine and called to live on the level of God.
And if we pray, “Hallowed be thy Name!” we will refuse to do anything to discredit God’s name. On the contrary, we will commit ourselves to learning his word so that people can read it in our behavior. Read it and be won by it.
Paul points us again to the “end time.” To persevere as a faithful people, we must be an expectant people. Our ever-present motive for “rejecting godless ways and worldly desires” and for “living temperately, justly and devoutly in this age” is that we are looking forward to something; something that should increasingly become the only desire of our hearts. We are reminded at every Mass, and we should remind ourselves every day, that we are “awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” This is what we are asking for every time we pray, “Give us this day the Bread of tomorrow, and forgive us as we will be forgiving each other at the ‘wedding banquet of the Lamb’”
Paul ends, “Jesus sacrificed himself for us” to redeem and heal us. As his ministers we make ourselves a “living sacrifice” for others, surrendering our bodies to his life-giving expression in and through our physical words and actions. In every interaction with others, we pray, “Thy will be done!”
Luke 17:7-10: Jesus is actually going to do—did do at the Last Supper and does constantly now—what he says we would not do for a servant: he waits on us while we eat at the end of the day. Knowing that, do we just want to do the minimum for him?
Initiative: Be awake when you pray the Our Father. Embrace its whole meaning.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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