Deacon John Writes

Deacon John Writes:

In a recent Gospel Jesus instructs the crowd that they should not babble like the pagans, repeating empty phrases. He is telling us that it is not how many words we use that is important but is about the love we show to God in all our everyday actions. So he gives us the Our Father as a model prayer. This prayer is in three parts. In the first part we place ourselves in the presence of God our Father and then there are two groups of petitions. The first group of three are for the glory of the Father, which draw us towards Him, and in the second group of four we present our needs to Him and commend ourselves to His grace. 

One of these needs is ‘lead us not into temptation’, which Pope Francis last week allowed to be changed to ‘do not let us fall into temptation’. He went on to point out that it is us, as humans, who fall into temptation, rather than being led. I ask you to incorporate this change into the prayer. I realise that this is not easy to do as we have all been saying it for many years, but let us try to do it, at least for today.

It is worth mentioning that with the final “Amen,” which means, “So be it”, we state that we agree and believe all that is contained in the prayer that God has taught us.