杏MAP导航

By Fr Edmund Power, OSB

In the Gospel of Luke, there is a particular emphasis on prayer. We note this in the number of times he refers to the personal practice of Jesus as well as in the formal prayers (the canticles of the Liturgy of the Hours, the Benedictus, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis are all found only in Luke) and in the direct teaching of Jesus. Today’s gospel is all about prayer. It starts with Jesus praying in a certain place. Clearly intrigued and not fully understanding, a disciple makes the request, Lord, teach us to pray.

The response comes in three parts: firstly, the Our Father; secondly, a parable about prayer; thirdly, an explicit instruction on the subject, using evocative images. The final verse of the text reminds us that all Christian prayer is the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

We are certainly more familiar with Matthew’s longer version of the Our Father, but Luke’s has the advantage of simplicity and precision. Its grammatical structure is noteworthy. It is essentially what I call the paternal vocative. This is the core of Christian prayer: the Abba Father, twice declared by St Paul (Gal 4:6, Rom 8:15), as the cry of the Spirit in the hearts of God’s adopted children. In Luke it is simply Father. The rest is an elaboration: two subjunctives that express a wish for God’s glory; two imperatives of intercession and contrition; an indicative that voices a commitment on our part, and finally another imperative of intercession. We see here the elements of all prayer: praise, request, sorrow, commitment and trust. In expressing these, we can, of course, use our own words. The formula in the gospel provides a pattern, not necessarily a rigid structure.

The parable of the friend at midnight does not lack a certain humour and exaggeration. It’s essential teaching is that our prayer should be persistent, even intrusive; it shouldn’t turn on niceties, politeness and restraint. It presupposes a familiarity with God and a trust in his benevolence and it is not put off by an apparent lack of response.

The last section guarantees that prayer will in fact always be answered. The difficulty is that the reply may not be what we expect. The assumption behind the Lord’s teaching is that God is unerringly benevolent and always acts for our good, even when we cannot recognize that fact. This is hard to understand, and there is no Christian who does not on occasion doubt it. Our life’s journey is never one of certainty. It is characterized rather by trust and hope, even when the lights are dim or even extinguished.

Maybe the Lord’s invitation to us through his teaching on the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time in the year of Luke is to reflect on our personal prayer life: to avoid caution and diffidence, to address God with expectation and hope, to seize the gift he has given us of adoption as his own, to call on him with love in our hearts.