There was something fascinating about Jesus’ prayer ...CHRISTIAN PRAYER SUMMARY
Speaking to faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square
for the Wednesday audience, the pope continued his catechesis series on
Christian hope by reflecting today on the Fatherhood of God as the source of
all our hope.
The boldness of Christianity
Here we see the great religious revolution introduced by
Christianity, Pope Francis said, that taught by the Savior’s command, we dare
to speak to the transcendent and all-holy God as children speak, with complete
trust, to a loving father.
“The whole mystery of Christian prayer is summed up here, in this
word: to have the courage to call God ‘Father,’” Pope Francis
explained. “The liturgy affirms this when, inviting us to pray the prayer that
Jesus taught us, it uses the expression “we dare to say.”
He added that calling on God as ‘Father’ “puts us in a relationship
of trust with Him, like a child that turns to his papa, knowing he is loved and
cared for by him.”
“This is the great revolution that Christianity imparts to the
religious psychology of man,” the pope continued. “The mystery of God, which
always fascinates us and makes us feel small, no longer makes us afraid. It
does not crush us or make us anxious.”
This is a difficult revolution to welcome the human soul, the pope
acknowledged. “So much so that even in the accounts of the Resurrection it is
said that the women, after seeing the empty tomb and the angel, “fled … for
trembling and astonishment had come upon them” (Mk 16: 8). But Jesus reveals to
us that God is good Father, and He tells us, “Do not be afraid!”
Francis said Jesus speaks to us of the Father’s unconditional love
especially in the parable of the merciful father, who welcomes his prodigal son
with supreme forgiveness. “What an unfathomable mystery it is that God
nourishes this kind of love towards his children!” he said.
The fascinating mystery of Jesus’ prayer
“Perhaps this is why,” Pope Francis suggested, “in calling to mind
the heart of the Christian mystery, St. Paul did not translate into Greek the
Aramaic word that Jesus used to address God the Father: ‘Abba’.”
Twice in his epistles (cf Roman 8:15; Gal 4:6) St. Paul touches on
this theme, the pope explained, and twice he leaves the Aramaic word
untranslated, just as it would have come from the lips of Jesus — “Abbà” — a
word more intimate than “Father,” and that we might translate as “papa or
daddy.”
“There was something fascinating about Jesus’ prayer,” the pope
told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square. “The disciples were struck
especially by the fact that, in the morning and in the evening, he would retire
in solitude and ‘immerse’ himself in prayer.”
Therefore, one day they asked him to teach them to pray (cf. Lk
11:1). And then it was that Jesus handed on what has become the Christian
prayer par excellence: the ‘Our Father.’
The pope stressed “we are never alone,” and even though we can be
“distant and hostile” and even profess ourselves “to be ‘without
God,’” the Gospel “reveals that God cannot be ‘without us’,” Francis
continued. “He can never be a God ‘without man’,” and this certainty “is the
source of our hope.”
“When we need help,” the pope said, “Jesus does not tell us to
give up and close in on ourselves, but to turn to the Father and ask him with
trust. All of our needs, from the most obvious and everyday — like food,
health, and work — to being forgiven and sustained in temptation, are not a
mirror of our solitude: instead there is a Father who is always watching us
with love and who surely will not abandon us.”
The Holy Father concluded his catechesis, inviting everyone to
think about all their needs, and about the Father’s love, and in this awareness
to pray the ‘Our Father.’
Look to the Sacred Heart
At the end of the audience, during his greetings to young people,
newlyweds and the sick, the Pope also recalled that June is the month
traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
He particularly encouraged newlyweds to look to this Heart “to
learn unconditional love.”
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