Fr. Agustinus Sutiono O.Carm

Praying is one of three important religious practices in our religion, together with giving alms and fasting. The fact that Jesus put it in a special attention means that praying is a necesity for religious person. However, many of does not how to pray. In the Gospel, we know that the disciples of Jesus came to him and asked Him to teach them how to pray. It means that they did not know how to do it. Because of not knowing how to pray, many of us look for books of prayer, booklets or leaflet of novenas, or many more others, and start to use them in our prayer. Saint Paul said: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” There is a story from the Prayer of The Frog by Anthony de Melo, as following:

“Late one evening a poor farmer on his way back from the market found himself without his prayer book. The wheel of his cart had come off right in the middle of the woods and it distressed him that this day should pass without his having said his prayers. So this is the prayer he made: “I have done something very foolish, Lord. I came away from home this morning without my prayer book and my memory is such that I cannot recite a single prayer without it. So this is what I am going to do: I shall recite the alphabet five times very slowly and you, to whom all prayers are known, can put the letters together to form the prayers I can’t remember.” And the Lord said to his angels: “Of all the prayers I have heard today, this one was undoubtedly the best because it came from a heart that was simple and sincere.””

A prayer from the deepest of our heart matters most. Jesus gives us some principles to remember when we pray. In praying, we are not to babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. God the Father knows what we need before you ask him. Furthermore, when we pray, we do it unceasingly, secretly, not to be displayed publicly to attract public attention. And Jesus wants us to have a great trust when pray, a strong belief that God will grant every good and beneficial thing that is important for our salvation. Lastly, we ask all these things in Jesus’s name.

The content of our prayer itself is simple. First of all, let us give to God His rights, and then, we express our needs. The rights of God are that His name be hallowed, His Kingdom comes, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then we are to express our needs, including the need for our daily food and health, the need to be forgiven and the courage to forgive, the need not to be drown into the current of temptation and the need to be freed or kept far away from every evil thing. To ask these things in Jesus’s name means that whatever we ask to God the Father are to be in accord with the spirit of Jesus, the spirit to serve the will of God, the spirit to make God’s name be glorified through our deeds and every action of love. Thus, a good prayer does not depend on a physical space. It needs a spiritual space, that is our heart.