Wednesday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

An elderly friend of mine often quotes that saying of Jesus in today’s gospel reading about prayer, ‘When you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and you Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you’. I suspect this is his own favourite way of praying, in the quietness of his room. Many people know the value of praying in a quiet place on their own. Jesus was not suggesting this was the only way we should pray. As a Jew, he was very familiar with communal prayer, especially in association with the great Jewish feasts. As followers of Jesus, we gather to pray communally, as when we celebrate the Eucharist and the other sacraments. Even when we are praying in our private room, our secret place, we do so as a member of the body of Christ and our prayer is impacting on the life of the whole body. Jesus highlighted private prayer away from others on this occasion in order to draw attention to its opposite, the kind of public prayer where worshippers seek to draw attention to themselves rather than to God who is being worshipped. Jesus is suggesting that even prayer, which is by definition God-centred, can become self-centred. The same is true of fasting and almsgiving. As people of faith, we need to keep asking ourselves the question, ‘Who is being served here, God or myself?’ Jesus is saying that much more important than what people see when they look upon us is what God sees when he looks upon us.