From the Word of the Day
Whatever you ask in my name, I will do.
(John 14, 13)
How should we live this Word
Now it is the apostle Philip who questions Jesus. ‘Show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus’ answer has a touch of disappointment! ‘Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’. He even affirms that, ‘The Father and I are One’. It is precisely by penetrating this affirmation with admiration that they will later understand the stupendous promise, ‘Whatever you ask in my name, I will do’.
But what does to ask in His name mean? A name means the very person. Thus, Jesus wants to say that we are to pray closely united to His Person. Because Jesus is One with the Father, He wants whatever the Father wants in a love for humanity that is His very passion, death, and resurrection. Thus our praying in His name means that we become ever more intimately united to Him. It is being sure of Him, of His love for us, of His desiring our true good within the Father’s plan of even greater love. It is evident that in the clarity of the Word, our asking can never be for that which we deem to be to our liking and what seems to be just, good, and beautiful.
To pray in Jesus’ name means to enter more fully in an interior climate of trust and of abandon, as that of ‘a weaned child in its mother’s arms’.
Today as I pause for silent contemplation, I will ponder these words and I will pray:
Lord, I bet my whole life on You. It is my joy to pray to You and to remain with You.
The voice of Francois Pollien, Carthusian Mystic
Your prayer is not a fact of your individual life taken in isolation. If that were true, it would not be prayer. Precisely because it is prayer, it is a fact of union.
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