Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
The Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS) is a centre for research and formation that promotes spiritual formation and renewal, drawing on the rich resources of the venerable Carmelite tradition.
It is an apostolate of the Anglo-Irish Province of the Discalced Carmelites, based at the Carmelite Priory at Boars Hill, Oxford, England.
OUR MISSION
CACS strives to achieve its mission through structured study and formation programmes in spirituality from the Carmelite perspective, especially Prayer and Spiritual Direction. At the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, you are welcome to enter into the silence where God’s voice is heard in prayer, word and sacrament, inviting you to journey ever more deeply into a place of growth and wholeness. Our goal is to bring people to experience a life-transforming friendship with God through a lived experience of Carmelite spirituality that is authentic to its biblical roots.
Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Word & Wisdom is a weekly reflection on the Sunday’s scriptures and the wisdom of the Carmelite tradition. It promises to offer you real spiritual food to sustain you on the journey.
This Word and Wisdom Podcast is brought to you by the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, Oxford (carmelite.uk.net).
To receive audio and written copies, subscribe by emailing podcasts@cacs.org.uk
To connect with our Living Prayer Podcast on Youtube, kindly click: https://www.youtube.com/@CACSOxford
In the gospel this Sunday, Jesus is not merely giving us a formula of prayer that is easy to memorise and recite. Rather, in giving us the prayer our Father, Jesus is offering a threefold invitation to us. In the first place, he is inviting us to enter into an intimate relationship with God.
Saint John pointed it out in his letter. See what love the Father has bestowed on us, that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.
Hence, we are reminded that when we pray, our only and best disposition is to be like little children. That is why Jesus insists, Amen. I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
God wants us to relate to him as a child relates to his own Father. With love, trust, honesty, humility, and total dependence. Prayer is the lifeblood of our soul. Saint Padre Pio calls it the oxygen of our soul. We cannot live without it. All of us need and are expected to pray.
Prayer is the expression of our relationship with God. The more we love God, the better our prayer will be. Therefore, there are no experts in prayer, but only true lovers of God.
Likewise, seniority does not matter in prayer, but only the ability to become like little children. Secondly, in teaching the Lord's Prayer, Jesus also invites us to enter into a more meaningful relationship with him and with one another. If we call God Father, then Jesus is our brother.
Perhaps, nobody among us here will object to that, but Jesus has identified himself with our fellow men, especially those considered the least, the lost, and the last. In the parable on the last judgement, Jesus concluded, Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me. He demands that we also accept his brothers and sisters as our own.
In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI said, Only within the we of the disciples can we call God Father, because only through communion with Jesus, do we truly become children of God. In this sense, the phrase Our Father is really demanding. It requires that we step out of the closed circle of our eye.
It requires that we surrender ourselves to communion with the other children of God. It requires that we accept the others, that we open our ears and our hearts to them. When we say the word "Our", we say yes to the living church in which the Lord wanted to gather his new family.
The Our Father overcomes all boundaries of division and makes us one family. Finally, in teaching us the Our Father, Jesus is inviting us to share his vision for this world. The Lord's Prayer demands a fundamental change of the world, from being a world of injustice, selfishness, and misery, into a world of justice, peace, and happiness.
It is a prayer that impels us to obey God's will, so that we can be instruments for the transformation of this world into becoming God's kingdom on earth. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus not only teaches his disciples how to pray, but also reveals the heart of prayer, a relationship of love, trust, and surrender to God.
St. Teresa of Avila amplifies this teaching by showing how the Our Father can lead us into deeper intimacy with God, greater humility, and a life of transformative love. Her reflections invite us to make the Lord's Prayer a living reality, allowing it to shape our hearts and guide our actions. Thus, the Lord's Prayer is a threefold invitation to become God's children, to become his brothers and sisters and of one another, and to become instruments for the coming of God's kingdom on earth.
We must reply, and it should be, Amen.