Prayer is common to all religions, but for us Christians it is of primary importance because we believe that it can connect us immediately and directly to God.
The Gospels relate how one day the disciples asked Jesus to tech them how to pray. Jesus replied by teaching them the Our Father.
The word ‘father’ is typical of Christianity. The other religions do not, in fact, address God in this way. Among the 99 names, for instance, with which Muslims address God, the word ‘father’ is absent.
However, the really startling fact is that Jesus taught us to address God with the endearing term of ‘daddy’. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and in that language children call their mothers with the word imma and their fathers with the word abba. By teaching His disciples to call God with the word ‘daddy’, Jesus was indicating the type of relationship we should have with God; he was revealing the innermost secret of God – His Fatherhood.
Naturally, since the time of Jesus, millions and millions of Christians have lived and died, yet all of them have addressed Him as ‘daddy’, because we believe we were created by Him, and that through Jesus, His only begotten son, our relationship with Him is that of children. And what father would refuse to listen to his own children? A father and a mother may have more than one child, yet each one of them is unique for them. We were not created from the same mould, each one of us is different, each one of us has unique fingerprints and unique DNA sequences.
Part of the mystery of our existence lies in this uniqueness, in the fact that everyone is a singular, unparalleled being. In God’s presence each one of us is truly unique, just like the parents that generated us. Therefore prayer is not an exercise in self-suggestion to make us believe that we are speaking with God. On the contrary, it is a way of expressing our faith in the One who revealed Himself to us as a loving and forgiving father.
For prayer to be true and authentic, however, its content must be consistent. Saint Paul affirms, “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us”. This is indeed true. Jesus has taught us that we often pray without obtaining what we ask for because we do not know how to ask for the right thing in the right way.
We need to take long lessons in prayer. Fortunately, the Church comes to our aid here, and helps us to pray together like brothers and sisters because we are all children of the same, loving God.
To get back to the question from our reader, it is true that there are millions of us praying to God every day, and yet every single word from us reaches Him because He knows us by name, and there is no danger that He will get mixed up and exchange us for another human being.
In this connection, Psalm 139 says, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”
I would like to conclude with a quotation from The Hermit – A Personal Discovery of Prayer, a very inspiring book written by David Torkington, one of our contributing journalists, “Once you admit that prayer is merely the word we use to describe the practical way we go about allowing God’s love to enter into our lives and change us, and through us others, you have to admit that prayer is the most important thing in our lives”. May God make your year a happy one!
Updated on October 06 2016