You will pray like this

In front of a catechetical center, there is an information board: “If you have a desire to be very close to God, to walk with him, to be guided by him and to be protected, and to act in his name, you are right here. Welcome”! 

You go through the front door and enter the entrance hall marked: “The Beatitudes.” It is recalled here that all who dedicate their lives to God and trust in him can be called blessed or joyful. They live as children of God because their God is free and with an eternal perspective. The door leads on. You find yourself in a room filled with light. A candle is handed to you: “You are the light of the world”! It is the light of Jesus that we hold in our hands, and that is to be brought into the world through us. There are many doors from this room. They are the doors of decision. I want to live with God and act according to him. I pass through the door that leads me further into the interior of the house. One can decide and pass through the door that takes us back outside. At the end, one can see the inscription on the door: “Prayer.”

If you open the door, you find yourself in front of a space that looks like a car wash. Here we carry misconceptions about prayer, from which we need to be washed to cleanse ourselves. Prayer is not an opportunity to show off our piety in public. Today, prayer is not so fashionable, but we can easily become actors. 

Jesus gives his disciples a prayer so that they have the right form of how to pray. We know the Lord’s Prayer. Individual requirements can be summarized as follows: We tune in to God: his name is Father; it is about his kingdom and his will; he is at the center; he is the one who promises life. The father and mother know what their child needs. The idea of ​​this picture is real to a child, not an adolescent. A four-year-old doesn’t have to convince his parents that after a few hours of play, he is as hungry as a bear. His parents usually know it themselves. 

Jesus transfers this experience to our relationship with God. Just as a mother knows when a child is hungry, so does the mother, the Heavenly Father, know our desires and our hunger. Jesus assures us that God loves us, that He wants the best for us, and that He wants to bring our lives to their destination. Jesus teaches us to pray. Prayer could be compared to a mountain rope for climbers. It maintains a connection with the mountain guide and ensures that, even in the event of a fall, the fall height is limited. It stays on course, helps you avoid getting lost, and prevents you from falling into ravines. One acquaintance is an IT specialist who works for a prominent company that reports excellent results. He described them privately as a “Shark Tank.” It seems that few people are eager for excellence, but many are focused on outcomes and would be most happy to see someone from the company fail. The image of a “shark tank” has also become a fixture in conversations about many other environments. The sharks’ sharp fins surround us, attacking, and a profound fear grows. 
 

There are no “shark tanks” in the Bible, but there is talk of a lion’s den. The story of Daniel, who was thrown into the “lions’ den,” is well-known from Holy Scripture. Unfortunately, the innocent are not always saved. Not all lions and sharks were stopped by God’s angels. On the contrary, it often seems that lions and sharks attack only good people. And prayer does not work as life insurance either. God is the savior in his Son for entering our lions’ dens, shark tanks, and vipers’ holes. All people are his, and he is with them, even when they feel lonely and abandoned. We do not always emerge from these situations without harm. We do not survive all attacks by lions, sharks, and vipers. But let us remain with Jesus, who opens up a life that transcends death. A well-known researcher in the field of communication, Friedemann Schulz von Thun, was invited during the COVID pandemic to speak about how people experienced the horror of the Spanish flu. He said he did not have access to professional studies, but he read letters from this terrible time. He noticed that people, although they submitted to their fate, were not in any way angry. Everything I learned testified that, at that time, everything was connected to people’s faith. They saw life as a challenge, an often difficult part of the journey, which was a preparation for heaven, where everything will be only good. This perspective, the researcher said, is missing today. We want to put everything into this life, to live only for this world, and this is the place, the situation that makes the difference between us and the time of that time due to the current pandemic. Let us put everything that supports the relationship between God and man and between people. For Jesus covers our prayers so that we may remain with God the Father in the Holy Spirit and so that no temptation may draw us away, nor evil within us, that it may separate us from Him. No one has made room for God in their lives as much as the Virgin Mary; therefore, through her intercession, let us ask for the grace to pray as our Lord taught us.