Pray daily, and persistently with a grateful and humble heart

In today’s first reading about Sodom and Gomorrah, we read how Abraham talks to God about his plan to destroy these cities with divine justice. God responds that he will not destroy that city if there are 10 people praying and seeking God’s forgiveness, worshipping and thanking God for the gift of life.

Unfortunately, not even 10 people are following God’s design of family life which is marriage between a man and a woman that is open to raising children in the ways of God. Thus, after helping Abraham’s nephew Lot es-cape with his family, God destroyed those two cities with fire and brimstone from the sky since his warnings went unheeded, and that mortal sin was becoming a contagion in the area.

It does not have to be that way! In fact, as disciples of Jesus Christ we can pray daily for God’s kingdom to come into our lives and our communities. We pray for the advancement of God’s kingdom because it is a kingdom of life – the first and most fundamental gift from God – and our human life comes to us through a mom and a dad, who are called to be united in the sacrament of marriage for all of their life, until death to they part.

God’s Kingdom of life is also filled with divine and human love. The perfect combination of this is found in Jesus Christ, who is the Lord of this Kingdom because he is God, and so shares completely in the life of God the Father. Jesus Christ is also perfect man, and shares completely in the life of the human family through the perfect human being, his Mother Mary.

God’s Kingdom has a King, Jesus Christ, and it also has a queen, Mary, the queen of heaven and earth be-cause she is the Mother of Jesus Christ, and thus the mother of all those who are baptized into Jesus Christ and his Church.

Since we are baptized into Jesus Christ we call God our Father, Jesus our Lord and King, and Mary our Queen and Mother. We are thus princes and princesses within this royal family, and we are called to advance God’s kingdom by our prayers through, with and in Jesus Christ and Holy Mother Church.

Thus, we should pray daily, and persistently, communicating to God with a grateful and humble heart. And since Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last,” (rev 22:13-15), we should pray first thing in the morning, and pray before going to bed.

God loves to hear from us, much like how we love to hear from a good friend who calls us to strengthen our friendship by sharing their joys, challenges and sorrows.

God loves to hear us pray for our needs to become strong in faith, hope and love, and to pray for our family and friends, “give us this day, our daily bread.” And again, at night, if we pray by reviewing the day with the Lord and count our blessings, as well as being sorry for our sins after making a brief examination of conscience

we can end the day by praying with Jesus the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” which is based on the Lord’s prayer from the Gospel of Matthew and chosen by the Church for her liturgies, or we can pray the Lord’s prayer in the Gospel according to St. Luke wherein we find this form, “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.” Lk 11:4

Jesus teaches his disciples that prayer is sometimes difficult, but that we need to persist. Prayer takes effort and humility, since we need to ask for the things we need, to seek for the truth in sacred scripture and sacred tradition, and sometimes to knock on the door of God’s home, the Church, in order to discover God’s plan for us.

Only with the gift of the Holy Spirit can we grow in our daily prayer life, and grow in our weekly worship of God and the reception of his divine grace worthily in the sacraments. If you are struggling in prayer or find your-self tempted in prayer, which happened to great saints like St. Padre Pio (May 25, 1887-Sept. 23, 1968), do not stop praying, but ask the Holy Spirit to help you over-come those temptations and thus enter more deeply into the Kingdom of God.

When making the sign of the cross prayerfully, we are praying to and in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. Anthony and many other great saints re-minded people that praying the sign of the cross in temptation gives strength to the soul to overcome the devil, the world and our own brokenness, which are the three sources of our temptations.

Prayer is a response to God’s love and is the lifting up of our hearts and minds to God in praise for all his mercy, in thanksgiving for all his natural and supernatu-ral gifts. Making the sign of the cross and uniting our-selves in prayer to Jesus Christ and his Cross brings fuller healing to our souls and blessings to those for whom we pray. Make the effort to ask, seek and knock, and you will be filled with the Holy Spirit and his divine gifts.

Peace in the Lord Jesus Christ,

Fr. Thomas McCabe