The Prayer of the Children of God

Daily Gospel gives us a great, short meditation on prayer from Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

In order for prayer to be fruitful, it must come from the heart and be able to touch God’s heart. See how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Every time we say the “Our Father”, I believe that God looks at his hands, at the place where he has engraved us: “Upon the palms of my hands I have written your name.” (Isa 49:16) God contemplates his hands, and he sees us there, nestling in them. How marvelous is God’s tenderness!

Let us pray, let us say the “Our Father”. Let us live it and then we will be saints. Everything is there: God, myself, my neighbor. If I forgive, I can be holy, I can pray. Everything comes from a humble heart; when we have such a heart, we will know how to love God, how to love ourselves, and how to love our neighbor (Mt 22:37f.). That is nothing complicated, and yet we complicate our lives so much and make them heavy with so many extra loads. Only one thing counts: to be humble and to pray. The more you pray, the better you will pray.

A child encounters no difficulty in expressing its ingenuous understanding in simple words that say a lot. Didn’t Jesus give Nicodemus to understand that we must become like a small child (Jn 3:3)? If we pray according to the Gospel, we will allow Christ to grow in us. So pray with love, the way children do, with the ardent desire to love much and to make beloved the person who is not loved.

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