Today we encounter Jesus’ teaching on prayer, which is more radical, challenging and life changing than we may at first realize because it encourages an approach or attitude to prayer, which we might not share or even appreciate. The Lord Jesus positively and unambiguously encourages a bold, confident, even brazen attitude towards approaching God in prayer. The Lord wants us to cultivate a way of praying that is hopeful, expectant and sure of God’s goodness and generosity.
No prayer captures this more beautifully and perfectly than the Our Father, which the Lord himself taught us to pray. The Our Father is the Magna Carta, the blueprint, for all prayer. Despite being so short and compact it encapsulates the essence of prayer and the very heart of our relationship with God. St Augustine said of the Our Father: ‘If you run through the petitions of all holy prayers, I believe you will find nothing that is not summed up and contained in the Lord’s Prayer.’
Jesus further uses the story about a persistent neighbor, who is a kind of a rhino that simply refuses to take no for an answer, to reveal that God the Father is not like the unwilling neighbor, but is a generous, kind and benevolent provider for his children’s needs. ‘Who is God?’ and ‘What is God like?’ are the most important questions we can ask. Today’s Gospel sheds a dazzling light on these eternal questions.