By Most Rev. Dr. Yvon Ambroise, Bishop of Tuticorin –
I have been sharing for the past months on the theme of prayer. It would be very profitable for us to understand prayer exclusively from the perspective of Jesus in his life and teachings. We do get very good insights on prayer, seen from the perspective of the life and teachings of Jesus. We need to use our own faith dimension to enrich ourselves and thereby realize the treasurers we have in a life of prayer.
Read earlier articles by Most Rev. Dr. Yvon Ambroise:
Prayer, in Particular, is Being in the Presence of God
Be Still and Let God Speak to You
Listening to the Heart of God
Prayer is Above All an Act of Faith and Hope
The Fundamental Core of Prayer is Listening to God
Prayer in the very Life of Jesus Christ We see that Jesus in his own life had shown the importance of prayer as he lived every moment by the power of Prayer from his birth to death on the Cross. By his own example and life, He showed us how much he valued prayer in his life as an important and necessary constitution of his life.
Let us examine each event. As a boy of 12 when he attained his consciousness of God as his true Father he stayed back in the Temple of Jerusalem three full days to dialogue and seek his union with his Father.
When questioned by Mary with a great anxiety as to why he stayed back three days silently and made his mother and foster father to search for him frantically in and around Jerusalem he replied very naturally without any excuse or disturbance (LK 2:49). And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father‘s house?” But Mary and Joseph did not understand what he said. Jesus revealed the awareness of his true self at the crucial age of growing into an adolescent. His great need was to dialogue with His Father, (in a spirit of prayer) even causing anxiety and disturbance to Mary and Joseph for three days.
When he grew as an adult and was ready to take up the mission given by his Father he felt the need of spending 30 full days, fasting and praying in a desert place alone with His Father. This preparation for his mission showed how seriously he undertook the realization of the plan of God in his life by means of authentic, long and prayerful moments, alone with His Father for 30 days.
This was the source of his strength to face the three temptations of Satan: the temptation of using his divine powers for personal gains; secondly the temptation of making himself a great miracle worker by falling from the pinnacle of the temple to the ground and remain unhurt; thirdly the temptation to be enslaved to the allurements of money, power and other worldly pleasures.
By the power of his prayer and fasting he overcame all of them. He gives us also an example that prayer gives the power to resist evil and all that the evil forces can offer a person to remain enslaved to sin. Christ who came to liberate mankind showed how he first liberated himself by the power of prayer. This was one of the warning Jesus gave to his Apostles at Gethsemani.
“Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt 26:41). After healing an epileptic boy, who was enslaved by evil forces, his disciples asked Jesus, “Why were we unable to drive it out” He answered, ”This is the kind that can be driven out only by prayer” (M: 9:28).
In difficult moments of life, full of worries and controversies Christ sought to pray alone, even the whole night with His Father where he revitalized himself fully through his relationship with His Father and an exchange in an in-depth manner. This was the secret of getting relieved of all worries in his ministry and contradictory circumstances. After the miracle of the multiplication of loaves he did so (refer Mt 14:23). And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.