17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 27, 2025

How and when to pray

Luke 11: 1–13

He was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.”

Further Teachings on Prayer.

And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.

The Answer to Prayer.

“And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

Preparation / Centering

If done in a group setting, the prompts are read aloud by the leader; otherwise a silent meditation.

Adapted from Sacred Space: The Prayer Book 2025

Presence of God:

Jesus, As I come to you today, fill my heart, my whole being, with the wonder of your sacred presence. Help me to become more aware of your presence in my life, and more receptive to that presence. I desire to love you as you love me. May nothing ever separate me from you.

[1-2 minutes of silence]

Freedom:

Jesus, Grant me the grace to have freedom of spirit. Keep me from being bound by desires and actions that are not good for me or others. Cleanse my heart and soul that I may live joyously in your love.

[1-2 minutes of silence]

Consciousness:

Where am I with God? With others in my life? What am I grateful for? Is there something I am sorry for, words or actions that have hurt others, and which I now regret? I take a moment to ask forgiveness of God and of those whom I have hurt. God, I give you thanks for your constant love and care for me. Keep me always aware of your presence in my life.

[2-3 minutes of silence]

Opening Prayer

Lord, teach me to pray as you did, with utter trust in the father’s love and care. Help me to treat you, Lord, not as a dispenser of favors and punishments, but as a confidant and friend. Give me patience when the answers to my prayers are not what I expected. Help me to be open to messages I may not want to hear, but especially open to messages of concern and comfort. Please listen to my pleas on behalf of those who are suffering in any way. In short, Jesus, help me strengthen my relationship with you.

Companions for the Journey

From “First Impressions”, a service of the Southern Dominican Province:

Today’s gospel has several segments, but they come under a general rubric: a teaching on prayer. What’s striking about the passage is something we might just take for granted—Jesus prayed. Jesus and his disciples are journeying to Jerusalem and he has told them that suffering awaits him and those who would follow him. Prayer is a major theme in Luke’s gospel and today we are reminded how important prayer was for Jesus. He was on familiar terms with God and the intimate way he spoke of God aroused the ire of his opponents. His disciples have heard how he has spoken about God, have seen him pray on numerous occasions and now ask him to teach them to pray. They must also have sensed how important prayer was in Jesus’ life.

They aren’t asking for a catalogue of prayers, an “approved list” of Jesus’ favorite prayers, or a list of required prayers that disciples should pray if they are to qualify being called Jesus’ disciples. They sense that the relationship Jesus has with God is unique and they want to learn about it and share in it. Jesus doesn’t disappoint them because the prayer he prescribes, “the Lord’s Prayer,” while exceptionally succinct, reveals the familial relationship he has with God. He wants to reveal and share this relationship with his followers.

First, he teaches them a prayer. It begins with Abba/Father. He is telling his disciples that for them, God is not a distant potentate, not a God on a smoking mountain somewhere. Rather, God is close, like a tender and loving parent. Jesus could have stopped right there, for he is not telling us some secret code name for God that, if we use it, will get us special favors. Rather, he is inviting his disciples to believe in the God he intimately knows, a God who is a close and loving parent, one who is bound to us and cares for us the way parents tend to and love a little child. What he revealed would have been enough for his disciples to learn and act upon. He has resealed the relationship we can have with God. He has opened a way for us to approach God in prayer with a sense of trust that, because of Christ, we too share in an intimate relationship with God. Jesus’ life was not without pain, disappointment and death; but he was sustained through it all by his faith in his Abba. That is what he is offering his disciples when he reveals his God to us. What follows is, as they say, “just a footnote,” to what he has just said.

The prayer Jesus teaches has brief statements that reflect what he has said about God: “When you pray, say Abba/Father, hallowed be your name.” So, believing what we do about God, we want God’s name to be hallowed. God is loving creator of us all and is holy. We want the rule of this loving God to be over all creation and all human affairs. May all life be guided by and obedient to God’s ways. Having praised and acknowledged the goodness and holiness of God, the prayer turns to naming our personal needs. What Jesus has told us about God enables us to pray with confidence that each day we will be given the bread we need—our “daily bread.” God is the One who can and will provide with what we truly need to live the life Jesus calls us to live.

Since we are still in the process of becoming disciples, we continue to fall short and so we pray for forgiveness for our sins. Because we have been forgiven we forgive those indebted to us. And, because we have not forgiven others we continue to ask for forgiveness. Followers of Christ who call upon God as he taught us to, are assured of forgiveness and there is no excuse for us not to do the same for those who have offended us. It is what God wants; it is what we pray to be able to do.

Along the way we notice that Jesus is teaching us to pray in the first person plural: “give us...forgive us...do not subject us....” The very prayer Jesus teaches us also reaffirms our unity with one another in Christ. Baptism has united us into a praying community and praying “the Lord’s Prayer” continues to strengthen the bonds that unite us. We pray as a community and at the Eucharist each member of the community is fed the same bread—the community’s daily bread.

The prayer ends with an acknowledgment. We know our fragility; we know how easily we give into daily temptation. How will we be sustained in both daily testing and “the final test”—at the end of time? The prayer Jesus teaches us in response to his disciples’ request, flows from what he says at the beginning, “When you pray, say Abba/Father.” It is as if he is saying, “Since your God is your loving parent, here is what you should pray about.” Notice how brief and general the prayer is? Even in the face of daily testing and “the final test,” we place our trust in the God Jesus has revealed to us. He encourages us to believe in our loving Parent. This God will not let us be swept away because of either small or ultimate testings.

The subsequent parable on prayer only reinforces what Jesus has already said—in case we didn’t get it! In the parable of the midnight visitor the peasant family has already retired for the night. The whole family would be asleep in one room and so they would have been disturbed by the inopportune knock on the door and the request for bread. The petitioner is shamelessly persistent and his needs are eventually met. Jesus is suggesting that since a neighbor would respond to a request for bread, even when asked at the wrong time and when the response would have been an inconvenience—how much more would “Abba” respond to the person who prays constantly? God will far exceed even what our “friend” and “neighbor” might do for us.

So we shouldn’t be ashamed to “ask,” “seek,” and “knock,” since we know the goodness of the One we asking, seeking and imploring. But Jesus isn’t teaching us how to pray for whatever we want. He continues his teaching, again reminding us of the One to whom we are praying. No loving parent would give a snake or a scorpion to a hungry child seeking a fish. Jesus’ example of a snake and scorpion is vivid, and we easily get the point. Our Parent knows what we need and will not give us anything that will harm us. Sometimes children reach out for what can hurt them, but a loving parent uses caution and wisdom to feed them what will truly nourish them. Jesus’ brief parables have driven home his teaching. Our God is not harsh or demanding, but is a loving Parent who gives us only what is good for us and is ready to respond when we ask: “How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?”

We are “seekers,” searching for God’s kingdom, yearning for it to come and hoping to recognize it when it comes into our daily lives. For that we need the Holy Spirit, for on our own we can readily miss what is of God. Luke’s gospel is a story about the Spirit: the Spirit brought Jesus into the world and filled him at his baptism. Jesus’ ministry demonstrated what a Spirit-filled and Spirit-directed life looks like. Jesus promises this same Spirit to his disciples and The Acts of the Apostles shows that when the Spirit descends on the community, they too begin to live the Spirit-filled life Jesus lived: the poor were cared for; the dead were raised; the blind and lame were healed; the crippled walked and three times, when the disciples were imprisoned, God opened their prison doors and set them free. The Spirit worked through the disciples to help them live Jesus’ life in the world. When the early church met opposition, it was the Spirit that sustained them and gave Paul and the other disciples the words to respond to their accusers.

Jesus ends his teaching on prayer by inviting us to ask God for the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is this Spirit who will enable us to pray in the confident and trusting manner Jesus has taught us. Judging from the subsequent account in Acts, of the community’s life after Pentecost, it is also the Spirit who will be an assuring presence, encouraging us to seek and find the divine in our lives and helping us to make the world a place of love and justice for all people. It is the Spirit who moves us to pray and acts to bring about this kind of world when we pray, “Your kingdom come.”

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy spirit to those who ask him?

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

• Do I think of prayer as a real conversation with God?
  How do I address God when I pray?
• Have I ever found it hard to pray?
  Do I find prayer difficult or intimidating?
• Do I think there is a “right” way and a ”wrong” way to pray?
• What do I expect when I pray?
• Have I ever had an experience of a meaningful connection with Jesus, His Abba, The Spirit, Mary, or another saint in any prayer experience?
• Credo is translated I believe, and I trust. Both are elements of faith. In my prayer do I really trust God?
• How often do I pray from a communal stance (we us our) as opposed to a singular stance?
  Do I pray for myself and my loved ones communally?
  Do I pray for myself and my Church communally?
  Do I pray for my country any myself communally?
• “Give us today our daily bread” may actually mean that we should ask for the bare minimum of what we need, and not hoard to ourselves excess food and wordly goods. Do I agree or disagree?
• What do I hunger for?
  What do I think the world hungers for?
  What do we as Church hunger for?
  What do my relationships hunger for?
• What do I have to let go of to make room for what I really hunger for?
• In this parable about the neighbor, we see that he finally gives in, not out of compassion but just to make the supplicant go away.
  Do I see God in that way, as someone we can wear down by persistence?
  Do I read further and see that Jesus is saying the God is quite different, more loving and more careful?
• Have I ever asked God for something and later discovered that if I had gotten what I wanted it would have been very bad for me?
  Have I seen the wisdom and providence of God in my life?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship:

"Entering into contemplative prayer is like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy: we "gather up" the heart, recollect our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, abide in the dwelling place of the Lord which we are, awaken our faith in order to enter into the presence of him who awaits us. We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us." "Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the child of God, of the forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved and who wants to respond to it by loving even more." "Contemplative prayer is the simplest expression of the mystery of prayer. In it the Father strengthens our inner being with power through his Spirit "that Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith" and we may be "grounded in love." "Contemplative prayer is hearing the Word of God. Far from being passive, such attentiveness is the obedience of faith, the unconditional acceptance of a servant, and the loving commitment of a child. It participates in the "Yes" of the Son becoming servant and the Fiat of God's lowly handmaid."(#2709-#2719 Catechism of the Catholic Church)

Centering Prayer is one method of prayer, which prepares us to receive the gift of God's presence, traditionally called contemplative prayer. (http://www.centeringprayer.com/) The Guidelines for Centering Prayer Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God's presence and action within. Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God's presence and action within. When you become aware of thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word. At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.

(Submitted by Anne and Bill Werdel, from the parish bulletin of Sacred Heart Cathedral, Raleigh, NC)

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:

Adapted from “First Impressions”, a service of the Southern Dominican Province:

At this time, our national response to the poor who cry out for daily bread in not good. Benefits have been cut back, the number of homeless is on the rise. "Give us this day our daily bread." We hear the poor crying out to God for help that we as a nation and as a Christian community should do something about. While the economy is again thriving for part of our society, the bishops of North Carolina note that, “we are still haunted by how the least among us are faring. There is too much poverty and too little economic opportunity for all our citizens. Our faith tradition as Catholics calls us to put the needs of the poor and the vulnerable before all else. In our job-oriented economy, this tradition is expressed in the security of gainful employment.”

Jesus said in the gospels: “Feed them yourselves”. What is my church community doing to deal with the issues of hunger and homelessness? Am I part of this project? Should I be? What about hunger for learning? How does my local community serve those with special needs or who have issues at home that make it impossible for them to concentrate, or study, or stay in school?

Poetic Reflection:

An honest prayer from Father Ed Ingebretzen, S.J.:

Our Father, who art in heaven and who are possible deaf: You hear our prayers; you see how impossibly weak they are— these words strung together, woven, stitched , knotted into shapes of futility. If our words were threads We’d dream of gold gowns But wake up wearing burlap. Lord, give us this day our daily hope Do you see? these hands once dreamed; our words once clothed kings.

Poetic Reflection:

Stubborn Prayer

(17th Sunday, Ordinary time)

Sometimes we hate To pray either because our Mood will not allow us or because We are angry with God and have Also witnessed too many people Claiming too much or too little For prayer and those that Sell it or demean it seem Almost terminally angry And judgmental **** There may also be A wee bit of guilt about not Praying when we promised we Would and maybe even a kind of Spiritual fraud when we recite Words we do not even mean and Even sometimes we pretend by Giving marvelous speeches to The Father while trying to Hide our true selves From Him as if He Did not know Everything Anyway **** But Luke takes Away any excuses we might Try to invoke when he has Jesus Remind us that prayer must be Honest and communal and asking Without guile that His will be Done but maybe just maybe The most vital aspect is That we keep at it for All requests of the Divine must always Be made by a Stubborn Pray-er

—Father Michael Kennedy, S.J.

Further reading:

There is great and readable book by James Martin, S.J., called Learning to Pray. It is readable and very encouraging as well as informative. Highly recommended!

Closing Prayer

Teach me to go to this country beyond words and beyond names.
Teach me to pray on this side of the frontier, here where these woods are.
I need to be led by you.
I need my heart to be moved by you.
I need my soul to be made clean by your prayer. I need my will to be made strong by you.
I need the world to be saved and changed by you.
I need you for all those who suffer, who are in prison, in danger, in sorrow.
I need you for all the crazy people.
I need your healing hand to work always in my life.
I need you to make me, as you made your Son, a healer, a comforter, a savior.
I need you to name the dead.
I need you to help the dying cross their particular rivers.
I need you for myself whether I live or die.
It is necessary.
Amen.

—Thomas Merton (from A Book of Hours, Ave Maria Press, p. 67)