Jesus prayed

5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B
Mk: 1:29-39    “Jesus went off to a lonely ... and was absorbed in prayer."

February 5, 2012                                                           

 

This is the only place in Mark’s Gospel where we find the word “absorbed”; Jesus was “absorbed in prayer.” His whole being was filled with a sense of the reality and of the love of God. This means that when Jesus prayed, he met God. It was more like a deep awareness of the reality of God. This experience was supremely important to Jesus. And so from time to time Jesus would escape from everybody so that He could be with his Father and open his heart and his deepest feelings to God.

Do we set aside time for prayer? Mother Teresa once said, “We need to find God and God cannot be found in noise or in restlessness. For Jesus, prayer was the way he received strength, wisdom, and joy. It was his way of being in the most intimate communication possible with his Father. And, as Jesus himself said, what happened to him can also happen to us.

We now pray that God will watch over us and protect us:

“FATHER, WE WATCH OVER YOUR FAMILY AND KEEP US SAFE IN YOUR CARE, FOR ALL OUR HOPE IS IN YOU. THIS IS OUR PRAYER THROUGH CHRIST OUR LORD. AMEN.