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Prayer First

The Gospel readings from the past three Sundays have described for us a typical day in the life of Jesus. Once He began His ministry, Jesus spent His days healing the sick, casting out demons, preaching to the people, meeting with His Disciples, and giving others hope.

While all of the things that Jesus said and did are important, today’s Gospel presents us with the most important element of Jesus’ ministry: prayer. At the end of today’s Gospel reading, we heard: “Rising very early before dawn, [Jesus] left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.”

Jesus was exhausted after meeting with people and healing them, even late into the night, day after day. Surely He needed rest. And yet, what do we find Jesus doing? We find Him depriving Himself of sleep, so that He could spend some time alone with His Heavenly Father in prayer.

Without prayer, our hearts and souls are empty of God. If we look at our world today, we can definitely say that the world does not need empty hearts and souls. The world needs hearts full of Love, of Mercy, of God.

For this reason, prayer should be first among all of the other actions and things that we do each day, just as it was first in Jesus’ life.

I would like to invite each of your to take some time to reflect on your prayer lives. What does your prayer life look like? What is the quality of your prayer? What must you do to arrange your time so that you can accommodate prayer in your life? I would like to remind you, that it is not important how much time you spend in prayer. What is important is the quality of your prayer, your faithfulness to prayer, and your desire to be with the Lord.

And so we pray: “Lord, Jesus, give me the grace to pray and to be faithful to prayer each day, so that my heart might become like Your heart. So that I might love as You Love.”

Yours in Christ,
Father Arthur

Readings for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Lectionary 74