Genesis 18.20-32 | Colossians 2.12-14 | Luke 11.1-4

We are beginning the seventeenth week of Ordinary Time with Mother Church. We are deepening our knowledge of Jesus Christ and His teachings.

Today, the Evangelist Luke speaks to us about the Lord's Prayer and the value of perseverance and trust in the life of prayer.

After seeing Him praying, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Then they learned the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father, prayed at every Mass. As a summary of the entire Gospel, it is the principal Christian prayer, to which the Catechism of the Catholic Church dedicated the second part of its fourth section. It is well worth checking out.

In short, the Our Father is organized into two parts. The first addresses the praise and sanctification of God, asking Him for the coming of His Kingdom. The second part addresses the petition for what is essential to human life: bread, forgiveness, and strength to overcome temptation and evil.

It is a communal prayer, even if prayed individually. The Lord's Prayer is always present in the sacraments, in the Church's official prayer (the Liturgy of the Hours), and in popular devotions (such as the rosary).

It is noteworthy that Jesus, even committed to His mission, dedicated himself to prayer, intimacy, and connection with the Father in the Holy Spirit. It follows that prayer leads to action, and action leads to prayer.

Jesus taught the value of perseverance and trust in a life of prayer by telling the parable of the impertinent friend who obtained the bread he needed. Jesus assured us that the Father in Heaven gives to those who ask and opens to those who knock, giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him, since He must be the most desired divine gift! Whoever has the Holy Spirit has in Him everything they need! 

It is important to consider, on the one hand, divine omniscience and, on the other, discernment about what is essential and what is superfluous. The Lord does not need us to teach Him how to be God.

He is the loving Father who cares for His children, the Shepherd who cares for His sheep. Prayer of supplication and clamor is important to identify what is truly necessary, differentiating what is human responsibility and what is God's responsibility.

Let us pray the Lord's Prayer with piety, without haste, meditating on each word. It is a spiritual treasure that the Church inherited from Jesus and passed on to us. Let us teach the Lord's Prayer to children and adolescents, encouraging them to pray with the words of Jesus and also to pray spontaneously, led by the Holy Spirit, uniting faith and life. 

Today, the author of the book of Genesis tells us about the conversation between Abraham and the Lord, in the famous context of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Palestinian cities that became symbols of wickedness and sin.

Conversing with the Lord is the same as praying. Abraham's greatest concern was whether the Lord, the judge of all the earth, would exterminate the righteous with the wicked. But the Lord assured the father of faith that if there were any righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities would be preserved.

This conversation about the righteous and the wicked, about destruction and preservation, about wickedness and sin, makes us think of the righteous Jesus who, through His death and resurrection, justified those who believe, forgave sinners, and preserved them from destruction.

Like Abraham, let us converse with the Lord about the pain and suffering of the world, praying to know more deeply His loving heart and His righteous ways, in the desire to imitate Him in our daily lives.

Today, the apostle Paul speaks to us in his letter to the Colossians about Christians' participation in Christ's burial and resurrection through the sacrament of Baptism.

Sinners had their sins forgiven by Christ's redemptive Cross. The debt owed to us has been paid, canceled, despite legal obligations.

Sin is a crime, and the sinner is a criminal. According to justice, the criminal must pay for his crime. Depending on the severity of the crime, in the cultures of that time, death was the criminal's condemnation.

By dying on the Cross (and rising again), the righteous Jesus died in the place of sinners, paying the just sentence. Therefore, Christians were buried with Christ and were resurrected with Him to a new life through Baptism.

It is always a challenge to balance the divine attributes of justice and mercy. God created human beings with a hunger and thirst for justice. But this is not retributive justice (which punishes the offender), but rather restorative justice (which seeks to repair the harm caused and bring reconciliation between the parties). Many confuse justice with revenge. True justice necessarily comes with mercy. Let us learn from the righteous Jesus.