Jesus – A Man of Prayer
Jesus was different. He did not flow with the tide of the people; with the current thinking of the times. He had his own thinking to give to the people - that's why Jesus was different. He got all those insights from the Father. The gospels present to us Jesus as a man in prayer. In Luke Chapter 11, Jesus was in prayer and the disciples were waiting outside. After Jesus had finished his prayer, they asked Him, "Master, teach us to pray." St. Augustine becomes eloquent when he interprets this passage and he says the only thing the disciples wanted to do as the Master did was prayer. Jesus was doing great things in the presence of the disciples. He calmed the sea; he fed 7000 people with just 7 loaves of bread; he healed lepers. But not once did the disciples want to do anything as Jesus did. The only thing they wanted to learn was to pray as Jesus did! Why? For the disciples, Jesus was first and foremost a man of prayer - His life and his teachings flowed out of prayer.
It is written in the gospel of Mark Chapter 2 -"the whole night Jesus prayed and when he came down from the mountain, he chose the Twelve Apostles." In the gospel of Luke Chapter 5, Jesus healed a leper and the leper went about all over the place shouting, "I 'm healed and Jesus healed me!" The name and fame of Jesus increased - his popularity spread everywhere. Yet in the next sentence- "Jesus retired to a lonely place to pray." In Luke Chapter 12, Jesus healed a man with a withered arm on the Sabbath and the Pharisees found fault with him. "How can Jesus heal on the Sabbath?" and they were plotting against him, planning to kill him. Jesus knew this - and the next sentence - "He retired to a lonely place to pray." The pain of misunderstanding - he went to the Father to share everything with Him.
In moments of decisions, in the moments of popularity, in the moments of sadness and misunderstanding, at all moments in his life, what Jesus did was to retire to a lonely place to pray. The one picture of Jesus that loomed large in the mind of the Holy Father was - of Jesus in prayer. He was a great man of prayer. We have seen beautiful pictures of the Holy Father with the rosary in hand praying, concentrated in prayer. In prayer, he got everything from God and he decided everything in the light of prayer.
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