Daily Prayer
September 2nd, 2010
When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.”
Luke 5 : 11
The excerpt from today’s Gospel comes at the end of a fishing expedition during which the apostles had caught nothing. At the invitation of Jesus, they cast their nets once more and netted a huge haul of fish. Peter is overwhelmed. It is only at this point that the other two disciples are mentioned, viz. James and his brother John. These three would also be witnesses of two other signs of divine power – the Transfiguration on Tabor and Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane. Peter will no longer be the only one to proclaim the message, though the statement, “I will make you fishers of men” was addressed to him. All three left their boats to follow Jesus. The text says that “they left everything” – not just their boats or fishing nets. To follow Jesus is a radical choice.
Leaving everything can be demanding. We usually understand ‘leaving everything’ as applying to wealth and property. Andrew Carnegie said , “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.”. In the Gospel we read the parable of the man who did not have enough space to store his bountiful harvest: “I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones.” God said, “this night you will have to give an account of yourself…”
The call to discipleship is a call to a relationship with Jesus that never ends.
Prayer
Lord, I thank you today for the generosity of all those who have left everything to follow you and to give their lives to spread the Gospel, far from family and homeland. Comfort and strengthen them in their moment of loneliness. Amen.
The prayer for each day has been prepared by various members of the Holy Family Association. All who visit our website are remembered in prayer. If you would like us to pray for a particular need, simply complete and submit the form on the right hand side of this page. You may wish to leave a comment in the space below.
Just a Thought
How the Holy Family prayer: A Reflection by Pope Benedict XVI
“I would like to invite you to reflect on the place of prayer in the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth. The home of Nazareth, in fact, is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to ponder and to penetrate the profound meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God, drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus.
Pope Paul VI during his visit to Nazareth said “we come to understand the need for a spiritual discipline, if we wish to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become disciples of Christ.” And he added: “First, it teaches us silence. Oh! That there would be reborn in us the esteem for silence, that wonderful and indispensable atmosphere of the spirit: while we are deafened by so many noises, sounds and clamorous voices in the frantic and tumultuous times of modern life. Oh! Silence of Nazareth, teach us to be resolute in good thoughts, intent upon the interior life, ready to listen well to the secret inspirations of God and the exhortations of the true masters.”
We can glean several insights on the Holy Family’s prayer and relationship with God from the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ childhood. We may begin with the Presentation of Jesus in the temple. St. Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph, “when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, brought the child up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord”(2:22). Like every observant Jewish family, Jesus’ parents go up to the temple to consecrate the firstborn son to God and to offer sacrifice. Moved by fidelity to the law’s prescriptions, they set off from Bethlehem and go up to Jerusalem with Jesus, who is now forty days old. Instead of a one-year-old lamb, they present the offering of simple families; that is two young pigeons. The Holy Family’s pilgrimage is one of faith, of the offering of gifts, a symbol of prayer, and of encounter with the Lord, whom Mary and Joseph already see in the son Jesus.”
