“Lord, teach us to pray.”

The invitation of the gospel today is to reflect on our prayer life. This could be something that may continue to be the center of our life, or that perhaps has ceased to be so. Or perhaps it has become simply something else that I must do in the day but that in the face of the multitude of things that arise, it is going into the background. The disciples living with Jesus have noticed his assiduous dedication to prayer and ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. Contemplating Jesus in this way like the disciples, should we not begin by making the same request of him? Jesus’ answer is precisely the Our Father, that prayer that has accompanied us since our childhood, but perhaps has not grown with us. It is still the one we “pray” every day, but the one we should never tire of delving into because it contains the essence of our relationship with that God who is our Father, and our relationship with Him as children and brothers and sisters. Let us pause today to weigh each of those wonderful phrases spoken by Jesus to teach us how to pray.