The new year is upon us and all of us are praying and hoping for a better year.  One of the things that I invite us to do is to pray together as a community of faith in addition to our scheduled liturgical services.  The Growing our Friendship with Jesus team is offering us an opportunity to gather by praying the Liturgy of the Hours every night Monday-Thursday at 7:00pm.

The Liturgy of the Hours is one of the most beautiful prayers of the Church.  In this prayer, we use God’s words as our prayer.  We pray with the Psalms, reflect on the Gospel of the day, and recite the Magnificat, which is the song of Mary, lift up our prayers for the world, the church, and our personal needs, and conclude with the Lord’s prayer.

Every time we gather as a community to pray, I am reminded of Jesus’ words: “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst of them.”   This means to say that the Risen Lord prays with us each time we are gathered.  It is He, through the power of the Holy Spirit, who directs our thoughts and minds.    It is Jesus who pleads for and with us to the Father asking God to listen to our cries.

In His most beautiful prayer found in the Gospel of John, Jesus says: “I pray not only for them (the disciples), but also for those who (all of us) will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us…” In prayer we are not only one with one another, but we are even more united with God.

Our world is in need of our prayers. In this time of division, discord, confusion, and fear we need to come together to ask our God for His mercy. We ask that the Holy Spirit move human hearts that “enemies may speak to each other again, adversaries join hands, peoples seek to meet together, hatred is overcome by love, revenge gives way to forgiveness, and discord is changed to mutual respect” (Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation II).

During this month of January, let us come together every night in prayer.  Let us bring our needs and prayer of thanksgiving to God.  I believe that the prayer of the community does not only bolster our faith in God, but it also strengthens our bond as a community.