In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Our Lord teaches us always by His example, first and foremost, of the importance of prayer in our daily life, that He who is the Son of God spent time in intimate prayer, and that He teaches us by His example and wants us to follow His example of the importance of prayer.
And then He reveals to the disciples the prayer of the Our Father, the perfect prayer because it is composed by the Son of God, that this prayer is unique of all prayers because it is given to us by Jesus Himself, the Son of God, true God and true man.
And in the prayer, a gift is given to us, a gift from heaven in which God teaches us to call Him Father, wanting us to have an intimate union with Him, an intimate relationship with Him, calling us to be one with Him as a family member, and recognizing that fatherhood in which He cares for us and watches over us, and above all, gives us His Son, Jesus Christ.
And so in this prayer, God is teaching us a unique relationship that is unique of all religions in the world, that God is Father, and calling us to an intimate union with Him to recognize His divine providence and care for us.
And then Jesus teaches us the priority of things in our life through this prayer, that the spiritual come before the physical, and in teaching us how important it is for us to pray for the spiritual, your kingdom come, your kingdom come, and that, of course, we want God's kingdom to come upon earth, but also, it's a reflection that we want God's kingdom to come into our hearts, into our soul, that we want the kingdom of God to reign in our hearts, our souls, and our mind, that we are truly conformed to His Son, Jesus Christ, and that we allow Him to reign in us, that His kingdom truly reigns in us. And so there is the priority of the spiritual over the physical. And of course, the wanting God to help us to, in all temptations and trials, that we remain firm and steadfast against the enemy.
Today we celebrate a votive mass in honor of St. Joseph, and if there's a saint that can teach us about prayer and about an intimate union with God, it's St. Joseph. St. Teresa of Avila, she's a famous mystic who reformed the Carmelite order, and a famous contemplative, she said that everything she learned about prayer, she learned from St. Joseph. She gave St. Joseph, she said that St. Joseph was her teacher in the life of prayer, and this is interesting because we see St. Joseph doesn't speak any words in the gospel, but yet his example speaks louder than any words, seeing that he had before him the Son of God incarnate, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, and the Queen of Heaven and Earth, the Mother of God, and that he would intimately contemplate this as he went about the daily life with the Holy Family.
And so we can ask St. Joseph today to increase our love for prayer, increase our attentiveness to that union we're called to have with God.
That union that we're called to have with God, no matter what we're doing in life, we could be busy doing chores in the house, we could be driving, we could be doing other physical labor, no matter what it is, we have so many opportunities to be intimately united to God and to share in that union that God, our Father, is calling us to. May St. Joseph help us, as he did St. Teresa of Avila, to teach us to pray, and that we may pray with pure and renewed hearts in faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.