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Father teach us how to pray. It is so easy to bow our heads and rattle off words, words that sometimes mean little to us and probably don’t mean anything to you either.

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Help us to be more honest in our praying. We see clearly other people’s shortcomings, but too often are strangely blind to our own, unattractive attitudes, habits and prejudices with which we have grown comfortable.

Help us when we pray to focus our thoughts. Instead of praying for all mankind and all our enemies, help us first to try praying for one friend or neighbour who is ill, lonely or recently bereaved, one person with whom we have strained relationships, thus seeking to correct one wrong in the world.

Teach us not only how to pray in church where the music and the architecture help focus our thoughts on you, but how to pray also in our homes where every piece of furniture and picture stir up memories, some happy, some unhappy. At our work, help us to dedicate our everyday tasks to you.

Teach us to pray when we are enjoying ourselves – or trying to. Give us also the courage to stay far away from any enjoyment we cannot share with you.

Don’t let us ever stop asking for common everyday things such as daily bread. You know our wants. We don’t need to apologise for many of them. But teach us also when we pray, to reach out beyond our self-centred desires, to those whose needs are much greater than ours. Where there are ways we could help enrich our common life, show us how. In all our praying help us to seek to bend our wills to your will, not your will to ours. Help us to be carers and peacemakers.

Amen

This article appears in the May 2017 Issue of Life and Work

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