REFLECTIONS TODAY
Today’s Gospel is the Lucan version of the prayer, Our Father, the longer version of which is found in Matthew (6:9-13). Luke provides a short introduction, narrating how Jesus himself is praying in a certain place after which one of his disciples makes a request that Jesus teach them how to pray. We may reflect not only on our need to pray but also, and first and foremost, on our need to ask the Lord so that he may teach us how to do it as we ought. Such request of one of Jesus’ disciples is born out of the fact that they see Jesus himself praying. The disciple who makes the request also points to John the Baptist who teaches his disciples to pray. Jesus and John the Baptist primarily teach their disciples by example. Prayer is an act of relating with God that can be taught and learned, but primarily by example.
First Reading • Gal 2:1-2, 7-14
Brothers and sisters: After fourteen years I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. I went up in accord with a revelation, and I presented to them the Gospel that I preach to the Gentiles—but privately to those of repute—so that I might not be running, or have run, in vain.
On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the Gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter to the circumcised, for the one who worked in Peter for an apostolate to the circumcised worked also in me for the Gentiles, and when they recognized the grace bestowed upon me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas their right hands in partnership, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only, we were to be mindful of the poor, which is the very thing I was eager to do.
And when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong. For, until some people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to draw back and separated himself, because he was afraid of the circumcised. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not on the right road in line with the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas in front of all, “If you, though a Jew, are living like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
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