Suy Niệm Tin Mừng Thứ Tư tuần 27 Thường Niên

Suy Niệm Tin Mừng Thứ Tư tuần 27 Thường Niên

Tại sao các môn đệ xin Chúa Giêsu dạy cho họ cách cầu nguyện ?. Có phải họ xin Chúa day họ cầu nguyện vì họ cũng giống rất nhiều người như chúng ta, những người giống như thánh Phaolô và Thánh Phêrô và Thánh Barnaba. Chúng ta tha thiết cầu nguyện và hành động nhưng hai việc này có thể làm trong sư mâu thuẫn!

Làm thế nào để chúng ta có thể biết và làm theo như thánh ý của Thiên Chúa?

Một số người cho rằng lời cầu nguyện mà không bao giờ thất bại là lời cầu xin cho "Ý Cha được thể hiện" như những lời cầu xin của chúng ta, trong khi thực hiện những ước muốn của chúng ta là để được hiểu biết Thiên Chúa, chúng ta nên luôn luôn tin tưởng và đạt niềm tin của chúng ta trong ý muốn và kế hoạch của Thiên Chúa. Trong lời cầu nguyện của chúng ta, chúng ta phải lắng nghe Thiên Chúa, dành nhiều thời gian trong sự hiện diện của Thiên Chúa. Điều mà chúng ta cần phải cầu nguyện trước tiên là chúng ta cầu xin cho chúng ta biết thay đổi. Để lời cầu nguyện được thành sự thật, chúng ta phải mang theo trong mình, những nhu cầu của chúng ta, kẻ thù của chúng tôi và nỗi sợ hãi của chúng ta với Thiên Chúa và lắng nghe những gì Thiên Chúa muốn nơi chúng ta để Thiên Chúa có thể ban cho chúng ta những gì chúng ta thực sự cần thiết.

"Lạy Cha ở trên trời, Chúa đã ban cho chúng con một tâm trí để nhận biết Chúa, một ý chí để phục vụ Chúa, và một trái tim để yêu Mến Chúa. Xin hãy cho chúng con hôm nay những ân sủng và sức mạnh để chấp nhận thánh ý Chúa và lấp đầy trái tim của chúng con với tình yêu của Chúa rằng tất cả những ý định và hành động của chúng con để có thể làm Chúa được hài lòng. Xin giúp chúng con có lòng thương và tha thứ cho những người thân cận, bạn bè láng giềng của chúng con như Chúa đã dành cho chúng con".

REFLECTION

Why did the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray? Even if these men were not particularly pious, they would have at least a rudimentary knowledge of Jewish prayers. They must have been to the synagogue or perhaps the temple in Jerusalem a time or two. They had to be interested in God or knowing and associating with Jesus would not have held much of an attraction for them. Perhaps they ask because they are so much like us who are like Paul and Cephas and Barnabas. We earnestly pray and act but can be at odds! How can we know and do God’s will?

Some say that the prayer that never fails is: “Thy will be done.” Our prayers, while making our desires known to God, should always submit to God’s will and plan. In our prayer we must listen to God, spend time in God’s presence for just as we cannot be outside during daylight and be unaffected by the radiation of the sun, so we cannot be unaffected when we come into God’s presence. The first thing prayer always changes is us.

In order to really pray we must bring ourselves, our needs, our enemies and our fears to God and listen to what God wants from us so that God can give us what we truly need.

May Your Kingdom come!

Wednesday 27th Ordinary Time 2022

Opening Prayer: Abba, Father! You are such a wonderful father. You provide all that I need for my earthly and spiritual needs. Open my heart to understand this prayer in an even deeper way.

Encountering Christ:

1. Beloved Children of God: The Our Father is a simple but profound prayer. In it, Jesus teaches us our true identity. First of all, we who are baptized are beloved children of God. This is why we have the privilege of calling God our Father. We are “baptized into Christ” (Galatians 3:27), which means that through our identification with Jesus, we become his brothers and sisters and, therefore, adoptive sons and daughters of the Father. St. Paul wrote that at baptism, through the Holy Spirit “...you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16). Our deepest identity, our spirits, testify within us that we are beloved children.

2. Hidden Sacraments: Because we are God’s children, we are called to trust him, just as a child trusts a good father who cares for and loves his children. This prayer also teaches us to rely on God the Father to provide for us in earthly and spiritual needs. We ask for the most basic of needs: daily bread. This refers not only to the earthly food we need to sustain our bodies, but also for the spiritual food we need to sustain us: the Eucharist. One translation for the Greek word “daily,” epiousios, is “supersubstantial.” Our supersubstantial bread is the Eucharist, the Bread of Life (John 6:35). We also ask for God’s forgiveness, which points us to the sacrament of Reconciliation. We ask our merciful Father to wash us from our sins, like a little child who needs a bath. We need the sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation to remain connected to the divine life of Christ. We can ask ourselves if we trust God to provide for our earthly needs or if we fall into self-reliance. Do we recognize and give thanks for the amazing ways that God provides for us spiritually through the Eucharist and Reconciliation?

3. Heirs of the Kingdom: The Our Father also defines our identity as joint heirs of Christ’s Kingdom. We pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” We are God’s children, “and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16). Jesus said, “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it” (Luke 18:16-17). We accept the Kingdom by becoming humble and enthroning Christ as Lord in our hearts (cf. 1 Peter 3:15). St. Therese wrote, “my little way is the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute self-surrender.” We can ask ourselves if we strive to surrender to God’s will in all things or if we struggle against his plan for us?

Conversing with Christ: Jesus, you are the King of my heart! Reign there with your justice and mercy. Banish any evil that tries to impede your sovereignty. Help me to trust in you completely and give me a deep understanding of what it means to be a child of God.

Resolution: Lord, today, by your grace, I will pray the Our Father slowly and purposefully, meditating on each phrase.

Wednesday 27th Ordinary Time 2021

Opening Prayer: As I enter this sacred time and space, I quiet my turbulent mind: You are all-powerful, Lord, and I can entrust to you all my worries and concerns as I seek simply to be with you and listen to your words of life. You know what I need, what I desire. I make mine the words of today’s psalm as I turn to you and praise and glorify you: “Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul” (Psalms 86:4).

Encountering Christ:

1. Jesus Was Praying?: Of all the Gospel writers, St. Luke shows Jesus praying most often. Jesus was praying in a certain place, he tells us. And he mentions this multiple times throughout his Gospel. Imagine that. Jesus, the incarnate Second Person of the Holy Trinity, going off alone every day to pray. Why would God himself need to take time away from his pressing activities to pray? This simple fact reveals so much. First, it gives us a glimpse into the life of the Trinity. Remember, the Trinity is three Persons in one Nature. Three real Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with real relationships. Jesus went off to pray because he cared about those relationships, about nourishing them and being nourished by them. Second, in his human nature, our Lord entered into the limits of time and space. His Trinitarian relationships, in some mysterious way, needed to participate in that. We share that same human nature, and we have been made participants in the divine nature through baptism. So we too can expect that the development of our relationships with the Trinity will require time alone with God. It’s all well and good to say that we are “always praying,” and that is indeed our ideal. But if Jesus himself felt a need to go off to be alone with his Father and the Holy Spirit on a daily basis, why would we ever think that we could make our Christian journey without doing the same? The Catechism (2697) puts it eloquently: “Prayer is the life of the new heart. It ought to animate us at every moment. But we tend to forget him who is our life and our all… we cannot pray ‘at all times’ if we do not pray at specific times, consciously willing it. These are the special times of Christian prayer, both in intensity and duration.”

2. Teach Us to Pray: The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. They had been watching him. They had been traveling with him, seeing how he passed his time. Clearly, prayer was an anchor for the Lord. Clearly, the disciples recognized that their own life of prayer was not at the same level as Christ’s prayer. But they wanted to grow, to improve. They wanted their prayer life to be what it should be. So, they asked the master to teach them. That’s what disciples do: they learn from the master; they thirst for more and seek to grow. How is my thirst? How is my desire to grow, to learn, to follow Jesus more closely? To be someone’s apprentice means much more than learning some information about something. It is not just a part-time slice of one’s life. To be an apprentice, a disciple, is to learn a whole style of living; it’s a full-time adventure. And since Christ is infinite in his divine wisdom, we will always have more to learn from him. Our full-time adventure of discipleship will never end. We just have to keep nourishing our desire to live more like Jesus, to learn from him, to discover in all the ups and downs of our daily life all the lessons he wants to teach us and all the graces he wants to give us. Then, when we are ready for the everlasting adventure of heaven, he will take us home.

3. Merciful Father: The Gospels give us two versions of the Our Father, the basic Christian prayer. The one we are more familiar with is St. Matthew’s, but the one given today by St. Luke is recognizably the same in its structure and content. So many things strike us about this prayer, which is itself a revelation about what being a Christian really means. It shows that Christianity is eminently relational. We address God as “Father.” We address him together with our brothers and sisters: “Give us this day…” We address him in the context of needing not only material support but also relational healing: “forgive us our sins.” This great, unique religion of the Incarnation is a vibrant, ongoing restoration of relationships that sin has broken. Even our moral duties are presented by Our Lord in this prayer as relational: “for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.” Christianity is not a moral code. Christianity is not a one-time acceptance of a creed. Christianity is a friendship journey, with all the vibrancy and drama that come with a commitment to any meaningful relationship. If it ever starts to feel dry, boring, or predictable, we can be sure that we have strayed from its true path.

Conversing with Christ: Lord, I echo the petition of your first disciples: Teach me to pray! I want my life of prayer to be all that you want it to be. I know that prayer is a mystery, that one who prays regularly is always going to find new challenges, new delights, new avenues to discover. Never let me neglect my prayer life. Never let me fall into routine. Never let me stop seeking to go deeper and deeper into the friendship you so generously offer me.

Resolution: Lord, today by your grace I will make an appointment to talk with someone I respect about my prayer life, trying to identify how I am doing and what next step I can take to continue growing in prayer.