The Power and Promise of Prayer - Family Reflection Video

Prayer is the most powerful force in Heaven and on earth. The British poet Tennyson wrote, "More things wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." A little book called "The Way of the Pilgrim" tells how continuous prayer changed the life of a nineteenth-century Russian peasant.

Breathing in and breathing out countless times a day, he kept repeating the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me." As a result, he experienced the bubbling joy, the lightness, freedom, consolation, sense of warmth in his heart, and burning love for Jesus Christ and his creation which he never experienced before. 

Prayer can change you and your life too. You can start with the Our Father, which Jesus taught his disciples. It is used by over 2.4 billion Christians to speak to God. Through it, which we identify ourselves as God's faithful, connect with God as our Father, and build relationship with Him as His beloved creation.

We can use it to connect with our fellow human beings and build relationships with them. Social media enables us to expand our prayer partners and prayer groups. Praying individually and/ or with others, we can come to know our true identity, relationship with God and others, and our vocation.

The prayer, Our Father, has two parts: an invocation and seven petitions. Three of the petitions involve praising God, and four involve meeting the needs of men.

In the first part, we address God, lovingly acknowledging him as our Heavenly Father, praising and worshipping Him, and asking that His Holy Will be done on earth and in our lives as perfectly as it is done in Heaven. In the second part, we ask God for our present needs, past needs, and future needs, and we ask for His blessings.

In this prayer, Jesus expresses His identity, His relationship with God, and His mission. When we address God as Father in this prayer, we identify ourselves as children of God and as part of His family.

When we make this prayer, we identify ourselves with Him, our families will be filled with his grace, and we seek to glorify Him in all we do and say.

Let us ask ourselves, what more do we need to do as a family to make this prayer our own?