NOTES for Luk 11:1-28
The disciples' request to the Saviour concerning prayer may at first seem strange. Who, after all, in the deeply religious Jewish society of that time did not know how to pray? Parents taught their children traditional prayers from childhood, just as every Jewish boy was introduced from childhood to the practice of reading the Torah at home. In this sense, there simply could not have been people in the Jewish society of that time who did not know how to pray. But something else is at issue here. In the Gospel era, very different practices of prayer existed within Jewish religious life.
Continuous inward prayer was fairly widespread, especially among the Pharisees. Some even sought to emphasise their exceptional devotion to prayer: they walked into people and trees, as though noticing nothing and no one, or stopped suddenly in the middle of the street, presenting themselves as absorbed in prayerful contemplation. And there were many ways of praying.
Different teachers proposed their own approaches, so the disciples' question to Jesus was entirely understandable. There are many practices of prayer. Which one would you recommend to us? Yet Jesus offers the apostles nothing particularly complicated. The prayer he proposes is short; it contains only the principal requests, those essential to the spiritual life of a Christian seeking the Kingdom. No verbosity, nothing superfluous. No long prayers, no special techniques.
This is understandable: what is at issue is communion with God. Not entering some special state of altered consciousness, not having this or that experience, but meeting God. Bringing two wills into contact: God's and the human will. Then the Encounter will take place. After that, all that remains is to maintain the contact that has been established. Not to lose sight of God.
What matters most in prayer is the continuity of one's inward presence before God. The steadfastness of the will and of the intentions one directs towards him. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of unceasing, persistent requests. The point is not to wear God down, but to make contact with him constant, so that God can interact with a person continuously, not merely from time to time. Otherwise the life of the Kingdom is impossible: it is possible only as this unbroken communion with God. All practices of prayer and spiritual life exist solely for the sake of such unbroken communion. They are only a means. The goal is life with God. In all its fullness.