Prayer to God the Father

Inspired by St. Therese' of Lisieux

On Trinity Sunday, 1897, only months before her death, St. Therese of Lisieux offered herself to God -to Him Who is Divine Love. In the Prayer which she had written for that special day, the young saint included a specific reference to a verse from St. John’s Gospel wherein
Jesus our Lord said: “Whatever you ask of the Father, in My Name, it will be granted to you”(Jn 16:23).

One can argue that this verse holds the key to the overwhelming childlike confidence which the “Little Flower” had in storming Heaven with her Prayers. She knew with certainty that whatever she asked the Father in the Name of Jesus would be granted. She held this conviction because she understood two things:

1). Jesus was telling the Truth when He uttered those words - He wasn’t lying;

2). Jesus IS “the Way, the TRUTH and the Life.” She knew that she could ask for anything…”whatever”… because Jesus had said: “whatever.”

When Jesus said “whatever” He was quite clear. Of course “whatever” should be understood as that which is licit and good, only that which is in perfect accord with the Divine Will of God. Therefore the Prayer which will follow this brief explanation appears to be a Prayer to the Holy Spirit, which indeed it is. But more specifically, it is a Prayer to God the Father in the Name of Jesus, invoking the aid of the Holy Spirit.

The Prayer is Trinitarian in nature - it calls upon God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. It is a Prayer which is both mysterious and most practical. The Gospels are full of instances of Jesus praying to His Father and encouraging us to do likewise.

When the Apostles petition our Lord to instruct them in Prayer, Jesus responds with the beautiful words: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven…” By the example of Jesus and by His explicit direction we are also to be committed to intense, detailed, daily Prayer to God the Father - OUR daily conversation with God the Father. Also, in the sixth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says: “When you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in private.”

This Prayer should be prayed with care following His instructions. Therefore, pray this Prayer alone. If you cannot pray it in the Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament in Church during a Holy Hour, then pray in a room or a place where there is complete privacy. This Prayer should be prayed out loud, in a tone sufficient for the person who is praying to hear the words as they are spoken. A whisper is sufficient. Why? Because part of the benefits of this Prayer comes from the person hearing himself pray to his Heavenly Father. As I mentioned above, the Lord exhorts us to pray to “Our Father” and we are personally strengthened upon hearing this most personal of conversations with God OUR Father.

What follows below is a mere framework of a Prayer - an outline. In no way is it complete! Each person will be inspired to develop some areas more than others. For example, let us consider the area of “memory” in the outline.

“Memory” is an area of Prayer important to many people today. Each time you go to confess your sins worthily in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, God not only forgives your sins but He also forgets them. But YOU can still remember your sins and so can the devil - the “other team,” so to speak.

St. John of the Cross discourages people from confessing again and again sins which have already been confessed properly and absolved in the past. If the sins have already been confessed in kind and number within the context of a proper, sacramental Confession, then mentioning these “same, past sins” again is to bring up something unpleasant to God, something which does not exist to God - a memory which God does not cultivate or admit. Why? Because in His Divine Mercy, He has forgiven the sin and “FORGOTTEN” your sin.

But think of all of the sins you have ever committed in your life to this date. Hopefully you can also recall that these sins have been properly mentioned in the Sacrament of Confession. Even though God does NOT “remember” your sins after you have properly confessed them and received absolution, you can still remember them…and so can the “other team.”

Think of every sin which you have ever committed - by yourself or with another person. Then consider each sin as an individual book housed in a great library. You can go into this vast library of your past, confessed sins and “pick up a book,” that is, recall a memory connected with that past, confessed sin . You can review it and be reminded of it and even the pleasures connected with it. You must also realize that the same opportunity is possible for the “other team.” In fact, the devil can use the memory of past sins, already confessed and absolved, to tempt you to commit other sins at the present moment.

This Prayer to God the Father can resolve this real issue of the “memory of past sins” over the course of your entire life. Then, as the Prayer is repeated daily, it can treat the sins of each day, sins of the present moment which you mention in your regular, sacramental Confessions. This limits severely the “other team” from having access to a vast “lending library” of past sins which have already been confessed and which God has already forgiven and forgotten.

 
In praying this Prayer invite the Holy Spirit to enter into your memory. In these or similar words you can pray: “Holy Spirit come into my memory. Whatever I have done that is sinful in your sight - alone or with another - I fully surrender the memory of these sins and the illicit pleasures derived from them to You, Holy Spirit. I never wish to be reminded of these sins in the future by the “other team” so that I might fall into sin again. I never wish to experience any pleasure from revisiting these sins again - neither at the present moment nor in the future. I ask you, Holy Spirit, to take away the memory of each sin I have ever committed in the past, those which I have properly confessed and, in place of those memories fill me with Your Divine Presence.”

Notice that this Prayer is divided into two parts:

1). “taking out the garbage”- asking that the “garbage” of the memory of personal sin be removed by the Holy Spirit

2). bringing in the “Good”- asking specifically for the Presence of the Holy Spirit to fill that place where the memory of sin has been for so long.

This Prayer addresses directly the power that sin and the memory of sin can exert over an individual. The same can be applied to personal habits or patterns of sin which seem beyond your own abilities to conquer. God does not wish us to labor under these heavy, self-imposed burdens. By addressing them directly and honestly to God Who knows us far more intimately than we know ourselves, we are asking the “right Person,” so to speak, to help us in our spiritual progress. Again, we ask that such memories of past sin be removed after we have already mentioned them in a proper, sacramental Confession.

There is also an area of this Prayer to God the Father which is devoted to “areas of personal development.” Only God knows if we are at the proper level of personal development in a particular area. In some areas a person may be quite advanced - in other areas the same person might be underdeveloped or immature, i.e., that is, at a level lower than where they should be for their age or state in life. The Holy Spirit knows who we are, how old we are and what our abilities are. This part of the Prayer can begin with these broad categories of personal development and then, the individual praying the Prayer can become more explicit, more detailed as he deems fit. This Prayer concerning “personal development” understands our great need to see or anticipate progress in our spiritual lives, at least incrementally. Therefore, the Prayer asks that the Holy Spirit’s help be swift (“by tomorrow”) and in stages(“the next level”).

 
You will, no doubt, experience a temptation if you regularly pray this Prayer. After attempting this Prayer for a week or two you may remark inwardly or to a friend: “I don’t FEEL any different!
I don’t FEEL that I am making any progress in these areas or in that area! I am going to forget the whole thing! I am going to abandon this Prayer altogether! I just don’t FEEL that I am progressing.”

Beware! Recall that in this life your “FEELINGS” have, at times, led you to God. They have also, on more numerous occasions, led you AWAY from God. Consider a short test in order to evaluate the past history of your “FEELINGS.” Have they really served you well in your life?

Imagine for a moment that “FEELINGS” are a person, a real flesh and blood person. Looking back over your entire life estimate how many times your “FEELINGS” have tricked you. Compare those many times to number of times your “FEELINGS” actually delivered to you that which they promised you in the beginning. Now you are ready to ask yourself the important question: “If my “FEELINGS” were indeed a real person and I knew their past track record of lying to me and could also recall the times my “FEELINGS” were telling me the Truth… would I buy a used car from my “FEELINGS?” YES? or NO?

Likewise, you would be most foolish to use only your “FEELINGS” to discern true, spiritual progress. Your “FEELINGS” cannot be the ONLY measure with which to chart your spiritual progress. Nor can we attempt progress in our spiritual lives in order to merely have good “FEELINGS.” Some people use physical exercise because afterwards they experience a good “FEELING” - a “runner’s high,” for instance. Progress in the spiritual life is to be sought because we wish to experience on earth a foretaste of what we hope to experience in Heaven - for all eternity. We seek spiritual progress because we have “restless hearts.” Saint Augustine of Hippo once said: “O Lord You have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee!” We approach Prayer because we desire Divine Intimacy - conversation with God.

 
And finally, before treating the Prayer to God the Father there must be yet another warning. All of this may sound too much like a formula or a recipe. That is what happens when you begin to write down that which is contained in the heart. This Prayer can easily become a rote formula, devoid of life. Do not let this Prayer become mere “words through which you must plow.” Do not allow this Prayer to devolve into a “wish list” akin to someone dropping change into a machine and then making a selection and pushing a button, then retrieving the candy bar or cold drink. This Prayer should be an intimate conversation with God - your Heavenly Father, in the Name of Jesus, invoking the help of the Holy Spirit.
You are speaking “heart to heart” with God in this Prayer, asking at times desperately for that which burdens you. Without a doubt you will hear, at times, an interior voice declaring to you: “Hey! You can’t ask for that! You are not allowed to request that! That’s impossible for God to grant.” Here you must pause and discern the origin of this declaration by asking the following simple question: “Does this ‘interior voice’ come from God or does it come from the ‘other team?’ Does this noisy chatter originate in God or is it from the devil?” Recall that Jesus said in St. John’s Gospel: “Whatever you ask the Father in My Name it will be granted you!” What you are requesting in this Prayer is certainly part of the “whatever” Jesus mentions in St. John’s Gospel. Beware! The “other team” will attempt to discourage the children of God to only share part of what is in their hearts with their Heavenly Father rather than laying it all before Him. Be vigilant and always recall that we do not listen to the “other team.” A good analogy here is the chatter that a batter hears in baseball from the other team. The other team works to tempt the batter to swing his bat when a curve ball is thrown. While the team in the field is tempting the batter, the batter’s coach again and again instructs him to block out all harmful “chatter” and listen only to his coach’s sound instruction.

 
There is a part of the Prayer which addresses the sustained progress in this Prayer - that each day the Holy Spirit will “double my progress” in this Prayer and “that tomorrow I might be allowed to pray this Prayer twice as well as I am praying it today.” We implore God to give us needed progress in Prayer.
This has been a brief and inadequate introduction to this Prayer to God the Father. This Prayer can be used as preparation to a Prayer of contemplation, for example in a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament, or it can be used on its own - separately. This Prayer to God the Father will appear simple or simplistic to many. “It appears too easy!” If they were told to climb a mountain or swim across a river in order to make progress in the spiritual life, they would begin making plans for the climb or the swim. Yes, it is a wonder too far beyond our own limited understanding to fully comprehend that through the Name of Jesus we have intimate access to God the Father. The aid of the Holy Spirit is the greatest Gift which we can request from God the Father in the Name of Jesus. God the Father deigns to grant us His full attention because we have listened to His beloved Son. More than once in the Gospels God the Father tells us: “This is My Beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased! Listen to Him.” If we listen to Jesus and heed His words in Saint John’s Gospel, we believe with great Faith that God the Father yearns to listen to us and to grant us the spiritual progress which we so ardently desire, through their Gift of the Holy Spirit. May God bless your efforts at Prayer abundantly.

Rev. Paul L. Weinberger, Pastor

September 3, 2002 

Feast of Pope Saint Gregory the Great