After concluding his reflections on the Ten Commandments at last week’s General Audience, His Holiness Pope Francis launched a new series of catechesis, which will focus on the “Our Father.” “The Gospels have given us a very vivid portrait of Jesus as a man of prayer,” the Ponitff said in the introductory catechetical instruction. Despite the importance of His mission, and the demands placed on Him by the people, Jesus often felt the need “to withdraw into solitude and pray.” This was evident from the very beginning of His mission, after the initial success of his ministry in Galilee.
As reported by Vatican news, His Holiness Pope Francis said that, although Jesus prayed like other people do, there was also a profound mystery about His prayer to His Father. That is why His disciples asked Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus does not want to keep His intimacy with His Father to Himself, but “came precisely in order to introduce us into this relationship with the Father.” We too must make our own the prayer of the disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray.” “Even if we have been praying for many years,” His Holiness Pope Francis said, “we always have something to learn.”
His Holiness Pope Francis concluded his first reflection on the prayer of Jesus with the advice to repeat often, during Advent, the prayer of the disciples: “Master, teach us to pray.” If we do this, he said, then God will certainly not let our prayer go unanswered.
