Part of the joy of growing up is the ability to do things by yourself more. When you reach a certain age you don’t have to hold an adult’s hand when you cross the street; when you get older you don’t have to have drive with an adult, and the list goes on and on. Of course, in all of this, parents want to help. They want to show you how it’s supposed to be done, while still respecting your freedom. I can remember a few times when I would be putting something together, and I could tell that my dad really wanted to help me. “Do you want a hand?” he asked. But I, more intent on asserting my independence and ability to do things for myself, said, “No, thanks. I’ve got it.” Of course, when I couldn’t get it right, I immediately went back to dad for help.
So often in life there are others who know how to do something, and they want to teach us, to pass on the lesson. And private prayer is no different. Hopefully each of our parents taught us a particular group of prayers like the Our Father or Hail Mary, or maybe the Guardian Angel or St. Michael the Archangel prayer, or Grace Before Meals. They showed us how we are to pray when we’re by ourselves or in small groups.
Some people stay there with those form prayers, and Catholics are particularly good at that. When confronted by others with questions like, “Why don’t you pray in your own words?” we usually respond, “Why should I reinvent the wheel? Someone else (often a saint) has created these prayers, and they match the way I like to pray, so it works for me.” There is some truth in the fact that as we progress in the spiritual life, it is often good for us to be able to approach God with words of our own that comes from the depths of our hearts. It’s not bad to use form prayers, and I often will, but there are also times where my own words can best express what’s going on in my heart and soul.
This is where we see Abraham with the three guests we heard about last week. Abraham is pleading with God, in his own words, to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Notice that he doesn’t deny the sins that are going on, but he’s begging because he knows that his nephew and his side of the family live there. So he begs God using words of his own to spare the city if only fifty, or forty-five, or forty, or thirty, or twenty, or ten innocent, that is, sinless, people are there. Of course, we know how the story ends: there aren’t even ten innocent people there, so the city is destroyed, but not before the angel of the Lord saves Lot, and tries to save Lot’s wife, who destroys herself by disobeying the Lord’s angel.
So if private prayer was sufficient, why did the disciples of Jesus ask Him how to pray? Didn’t they want to simply talk to God in their own words? The disciples realized that Jesus was forming a new community, an assembly of people, which in Greek is translated ekklesia, which is where we get the words ecclesial, meaning of the Church. The disciples realized that Jesus was forming a Church, and they wanted to know if this new assembly, taken from the Chosen People of Israel, would have its own prayer as a community.
And Jesus does not disappoint. He gives them a prayer which we pray every Sunday, the Our Father. But the approach is interesting. The disciples don’t assume that they know how to pray within this new community. They ask Jesus, the Master, to teach them how to address God. They know that they need to learn how to pray to God in a way that pleases Him.
We have a prayer that is for the community, that includes the Our Father, but is not limited to it: the Mass. The Mass is the prayer of the Church, offered for the Church for her benefit. It is the prayer that Jesus gave us, through His spokesman, His Vicar, the Pope. But sometimes we’re not like the disciples. Instead, we assume we know best how to pray to God, and that no one can tell us how we should pray as a community. We assume that if we could make the Mass according to our modern mind of what’s best, then that would be the prayer that God wants to receive, even though He may have said something different.
To put it in another context, it would be like someone asking for an iPod touch for a birthday, and us deciding that we know what’s best, and what he or she really wants is a set of speakers for the car. It doesn’t respect the desire of the one who asks.
While the Mass is our community prayer, it does not belong to us as if we have authority over it. It does not even belong to me as a priest, or to any parish priest. I’m only allowed to do what the Sacramentary, the book which tells me how to celebrate Mass, tells me to do. Sometimes it’s not specific, but many times it is. Only the Pope and the Bishops are allowed to alter the way certain aspects of the Mass are celebrated, and even the Bishops can’t change that much, because the Pope guards the unity of the entire Church, whether it’s in America, Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, or Australia, and the way that Jesus wants us to pray to His Father. It’s not about us. It’s about God, and how He wants to be worshipped.
And this is a challenge for us, including me, at times. I’m a pretty by-the-book sort of guy, that’s true. But sometimes I think that it would add to the Mass if we added this, or tweaked that. But in those moments I have to remind myself that the Mass is not mine. It’s the expression of how God wants us to pray in community, and it belongs to the entire assembly, the entire Church, not just particular groups.
So, when we’re praying privately, then there are more ways to express that conversation with God. And I hope that we take advantage of the myriad of legitimate ways to express the longing our souls feel for God. But when we’re together, we have the very teaching of Jesus, through His Vicar, on how we are to pray as a community. May our attitude when it comes to the Mass be the same as the disciples who begged Jesus, “‘Lord, teach us to pray.’”