God’s Grace and Prayer – Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

Isaiah 55 is about God’s invitation to His grace.  It begins with an expression of God’s desire to provide us fulfill us with His grace so that we would not seek to satisfy ourselves in a wrong way.

In the First Reading for Tuesday of the First Week of Lent (Isaiah 55:10-11), we are reminded that the Word that comes of God’s mouth, dabar, is not wasted in us but rather to be received by us but rather to bear fruit to please God – just as rain and snow fall on earth so that the earth can produce abundant fruits. So, the First Reading calls us to make our Lenten journey fruitful. Perhaps, we can call our Lenten season a pregnant time.

God provides for us. And with grace of God, our needs are met. Therefore, we are satisfied. Right?

So, if we are satisfied by grace that God gives, as reminded by the First Reading (Isaiah 55:10-11), why do we need to pray?, as some may ask. And if you happened to be one of them who ask such a question, you are reminded that we do not pray to God to demand Him to give us whatever we want but to pray with our confidence that God already knows of what is necessary for us and provides us as He wills. That is all. And that suffices.  This is what Jesus tells through the Gospel Reading for Tuesday of the First Week of Lent (Matthew 6:7-17), which is the part skipped in the Gospel Reading for Ash Wednesday (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18).

As we are reminded by Jesus of the right mindset for our practice of the Lenten virtues of prayer, fasting, almsgiving – to have selfless mindset – on Ash Wednesday from Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18, today, Jesus teaches us what our prayer is and is about in Matthew 6:7-15.

Because it is not about us but about God, when we pray, Jesus tells:

In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him (Matthew 6:7-8).

Those who pray in their verbal babbles are letting their internal insecurity manifest and project it to God. It is as how an obsessive-compulsive person speaks, being so repetitive because of his or her excessive anxiety inside.

Do we pray to God out of our anxiety and project our insecurity to God in our verbal babbles?

No.

We pray out of our confidence – our confidence in God’s providence, as poetically reflected in Isaiah 55.

That is why we need to have a mature faith that enables us to have our confidence, not anxiety, as we pray.

With our confidence in God’s providence, Jesus invites us to pray:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.  Matthew 6:9-13

Notice, we begin our prayer to God by honoring God the Father in heaven, as it is not about us but about God. So, first and foremost, we express our admiration to God for His greatness and for His holy name out of our love of God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and in the spirit of Psalm 99:3:

Let them praise your great and awesome name: Holy is he!

And we express our confidence in the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

This is the first part of the prayer (Matthew 6:9-10), solely on God.

Then, we bring ourselves in the second part of the prayer (Matthew 6:10-13).

As we now connect ourselves to God in the second part of the prayer, we ask what we need:

* Daily sustenance, represented by daily bread

* Mercy of God to be forgiven so that we can forgive as God does to us, and not to be abandoned in πειρασμόν/peirasmon, which means “temptation” as well as “test” or “trial” but to be rescued from evil, if it subjects us to our “trials” or “temptations”.

Both our daily sustenance and mercy of God that we ask to God in this prayer are provided for us as rain and snow waters the earth so that the earth can produce abundant fruits, as Matthew 6:7-15 is reflected in Isaiah 55:10-11.

Do we focus on God in our prayer and commitment to other Lenten virtues: fasting and almsgiving? Is something pleasing to God being generated through our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, during Lent? God continues to pour His grace for our daily sustenance through the Bread of Life (the Body of Christ in the Eucharist) and the Word of God, along with His mercy, pouring down like rain and snow, on us. Let us not waste any of God’s providence. Let our Lent be a season for us to make ourselves fruitful in returning God’s unconstructed grace as our constructed grace.

To make sure we pray with the right mindset for God’s grace to be received in us as God wills, let us also reflect on the Suscipe prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola, reflecting 2 Corinthians 12:9, taken from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola #234:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

my memory, my understanding,

and my entire will,

All I have and call my own.

 You have given all to me.

To you, Lord, I return it.

 Everything is yours; do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace,

that is enough for me.

Suscipe, Domine, universam meam libertatem.

Accipe memoriam, intellectum atque voluntatem omnem.

Quidquid habeo vel possideo, mihi largitus es;

id tibi totum restituo,ac tuae prorsus voluntati trado gubernandum.

 Amorem tui solum cum gratia tua mihi dones,

et dives sum satis, nec aliud quidquam ultra posco.

First and foremost, we surrender to God’s will and let Him take (suscipe) whatever becomes an obstacle in the prayer that Jesus has taught in Matthew 6:9-13, reflecting this prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.