OUR RESPONSIBILITY IN PRAYER Homily for Thursday of the 11th week in ordinary time
Homily for Thursday of the 11th week in ordinary time 2 Cor.11:1-11; Ps.111; Matthew 6:7-15 OUR RESPONSIBILITY IN PRAYER What is Prayer? The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God. It is entering into a relationship with the Divine with the sole purpose of total surrender to Him. Prayer is a relationship between a superior and a subordinate. Therefore, what counts for an effective prayer is the submissiveness of the subordinate to the superior. The subordination of the subordinate is not a matter of words but of attitude. Words are only employed to communicate ones submissiveness. In today’s gospel, Jesus corrects the prayer mentality of the Gentiles who likened prayer to a rhetoric exercise in which the effectiveness of the prayer is dependent on the beauty of the lyrics employed. Prayer is not an entertainment wherein God is a guest to be entertained. The length of time and the strong command of words used in prayer are ...