A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, spending the entire night in communion with God. At daybreak, he called his disciples. Notice he was alone. At daybreak, he called his disciples and selected 12 of them to be his apostles.
Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, and Andrew, his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James, son of Alpheus, and Simon called the zealot, Judas, son of James, and Judas Iscariot who turned traitor. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Once again, we have this phenomenon, because I it is certainly that of our blessed lord withdrawing to a mountaintop or to some solitary place to be alone.
And you'll notice this was on the eve of an extremely important event in his life when he was about to choose his very his closest followers, the apostles. Notice one of them turned sour. And remember, Peter had his little day too, so it's in a sense two out of 12. That's one sixth. But anyway, the point I wish to emphasize and call to your attention is the fact that here again we have our lord not going to the temple in Jerusalem, not going down into a synagogue, not going to a group of people, not joining a community, but going out on the mountain alone to be with god, to commune with god, to pray, pray.
There is nothing more important in our lives than prayer. And in a sense, there's nothing more difficult. I've read books that have been at this thing for years and years. I've read all kinds of books about prayer. And some of them, you don't see it very much now, but it used to be that you would find find them telling you how simple, how natural, how easy, how rewarding, how uplifting, all of this, all of this.
And they said this is prayer. Now the point is sometimes prayer is that. It's all of that. But just remember this. On one occasion, when our lord prayed, he sweated blood.
How about that? Anyone tries to tell me that prayer is easy, I I'm not speaking for anyone else, but I have never found it, generally speaking. Of course, there are times when it's easy to pray. Easy. But there are probably just the times that we we're praying least.
Do you know that? And the the reason is very simple, because there's so much of me in it. And the best kind of prayer is the prayer there where the most of it is about god. How many times have I heard good, honest, faithful people saying, I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't get any comfort in my prayers anymore.
What do you say? Well, the first thing I say, whether it's good or bad, is who told you you're supposed to get comfort? Christ never said that. And all I can say, look at Jesus. He's not a bad example to follow, you know.
And let me tell you, there are plenty of people who are pretty good prayers such as Saint Teresa of Avila. I told you, I I I found this as a quotation. I did not read it myself. But it's she is quoted as saying that often enough when she had finished praying, she'd say, thank god that's over, because it was a task. Praying can be difficult.
And let me tell you, those prayers where that we find difficult when we say, I don't get anything out of it, I'm just dried up, They may be the best prayers you have offered. And now this is this is the simple truth. I I'm not gilding a lily at all. This is the simple truth. Now another mistake we make, besides thinking that prayer is easy and prayer is natural of course, prayer is natural when you're scared to death, but that's not the kind of prayer I'm talking about.
That's only one kind of prayer, the prayer of petition. And notice it doesn't come first in the lord's prayer. And, again, that's not a very bad paradigm to keep in mind when you pray, the lord's prayer. After all, when the the disciples asked Jesus, they said, look, We don't know how to pray. We're not getting any place.
Teach us to pray. That's the cry of plenty of people. Lord, teach me to pray. But why are they why are they asking for prayer? To be comforted, to be solace, to find peace of soul as we say?
And yet our our lord never never said a word they would get any of that out of prayer. The lord's lord's prayer is a very good example of how to pray, and notice what comes first. Our father, god. God. God.
And yet, you just take any old book that's been published in the last fifteen years and just look how much I comes into it. Just look at it. And especially in some of these translations, and I'll give you one example, the Magnifica. But anyway, the second thing about prayer is that there are all kinds of prayer. Now this is another mistake we make.
We think that there's only one kind of prayer, but there are all kinds of prayer. And they it's like looking at a at your bookshelf. Here you have a quiet evening. You say, what book shall I read? Well, what are what we what humor am I?
What would I like to read this evening? There are all kinds of prayer, and you should adapt the prayer to the situation. Today well, going back again ten or twenty years, there's been a downgrading of what I would call formula prayers, and above all, the rosary. Because the great brains will tell us, well, you know, it's so repetitious. You can't keep your mind on it.
Of course, you can't keep your mind on it. You can't keep your mind very long on anything and especially on prayer. It's a constant tug of war unless you're a Saint Teresa of Avila. And when you get up there, then you can tell me how to pray. There are plenty of different kinds of prayer, and we should adapt it to the situation.
It says, our Lord commune with God. That's a pretty high form of prayer. Is that what I expect little old me to be doing? That's arrogance. In the seminary, we used to get up at 05:00 and we'd have meditation at 05:30.
Now who can meditate? Meditation means to be thinking. Who's who's very alive and thinking at 05:30 in the morning on a cold winter's day, so what do we do? So what do we do? There is the time to have a formula prayer, something you can depend on, something that'll come naturally to your mind, naturally to your lips.
Formula prayer is very important, very important. And I often think of this. Today, very often, in many instances, people have given up the old formula of the grace at meals. You're supposed to offer some kind of a spontaneous prayer. Try offering a spontaneous prayer three times a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days of a year.
See how spontaneous it gets. Are you going to give up praying because you can't pray pray spontaneously? That's precisely what happens. That's precisely what happens. We give up praying.
I'm speaking of myself, and I've said this before, and I I have plenty of authorities behind me on this because, obviously, we can no longer we can no more spout out spontaneous prayers than a sense of a person gives spontaneous speeches. And so we come back to this. Of course, there are different levels of prayer. The highest form of prayer is the prayer of the gurus of ours. When someone said, He used to sit for hours in the pew of his little old church, and all he did was sit.
He didn't say his office, he didn't say his rosary, he didn't have a prayer book, he didn't have anything. And someone said, In the name of heavens, what do you do there? And the cure answered, I look at him and he looks at me. Fine. But that's the Curie of ours talking, and we recognize him as a saint.
I don't think I can do that. I can do it for a little while, yes, but I can't do it at all times. I can't turn it on like I turn water on in the faucet. I come come back to the Benedictines. They've been around a long time, sixth century.
They've been around a long time. And they know what it is to pray. And they know the importance of having a book before you. If you've traveled in some of the older cathedrals and monasteries, you will see huge books this wide because they only had one book for the monks to sing from. And they put that out in the middle of the choir so the monk could all see the lettering.
And some of the initial letters would be put in gold and in color. That wasn't done just for the sake of ornament. That was done so they could see those initial letters and their memory would fill in the words. And I've been in plenty of those monasteries to spend a week or more than that at times. But the thing is, those very monks who spend all that time in choir with a book in their hand singing the divine office, you'll see those very same men quietly the shadow of a pillar or something communing with God.
So the point I'm making is, you should know the various kinds of prayer. And above all, we should never feel discouraged. That's the point. God doesn't ask us to be solace. He asks us to pray and remember the bottom line, thy will, not mine, be done.
And that goes with my praying. Praying prayer is a gift, and what god gives me in a single simple prayer is a gift. I have not what right have I to expect anything? We go back to that very same principle that god exists. I'm his creature.
I owe him. He doesn't owe me anything. Nothing. So the first thing I do is to go to god and sing, hallelujah. Praise god.
That's the prayer. And so in our lives and don't forget this prayer of work, the opus dei idea. Don't ever forget that. I remarked yesterday about this movie star who asked herself, What is is life nothing but a a discussion between me and my director, how to how I'm supposed to open a door or walk over to a door? So she said, Couldn't be that.
So she was taking up helping children who needed it so desperately. And that's very important work and a very loving thing to do. But the thing is this, is God in it? Is God it can be mere philanthropy, love of human beings. And the first thing we're called upon is to love God.
And so the first thing our prayer should be is to bring us in the union with God. That's absolutely the first thing. And don't expect anything. It's up to you to give. This is not a contractual relationship.
This isn't exchanging Christmas presents. We are bound to go to God. And the best way of going to him is with the prayer his son gave us, the lord's prayer. That is the model. You can't go wrong on the prayer of Jesus Christ.
In the name of the father and the son, holy spirit. Amen.