(2:41) - What is a prayerful life?

(5:38) - How is "Lord, Teach Us to Pray" structured?

(6:41) - How can I benefit most from "Lord Teach Us to Pray"?

Today, together with the first disciples, we address this petition to the Master: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk 11:1). Jesus answers by teaching us the Lord’s Prayer and tells us the parable of the persistent friend. He shows us what to pray for and invites us to pray insistently, in season and out of season: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened” (Lk 11:9-10). He has written in our hearts the desire to pray, to pray better, to make our life a prayer, a liturgy; to pray always (Lk 18:1-8), not in the sense of reciting prayers at every moment, but in the sense of always being attentive to the Holy Spirit, in the presence of God, so that all our activities become a response to his will, an offering to our Lord.

Praying in the school of Jesus, in the Church, is the way to meet the Lord every day, as he constantly walks and rests at our side. Jesus, the fount that quenches our thirst, awaits us by the well at the hottest and driest hour of the day to say, “Give me a drink.” He thirsts for us and we thirst for God, even if we do not know it: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst, for the water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:13-14).

What you have in your hands, Lord, Teach Us to Pray, is a path of initiation. It is an introduction to the life of prayer, so that the lay members of Regnum Christi may learn to pray by praying, as part of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church,  in the style of Regnum Christi. When we pray, we unite ourselves to the prayer of Christ, to his Person and to his Body – the Church – to address the Father in communion with the Holy Spirit. Common prayers and guidelines help us experience communion with the Church and Regnum Christi even when we pray alone, and facilitate times of community prayer.