Pope Francis: Jesus Prayed the Prayers ‘His Mom Taught Him’

Like every good child, Jesus learned to pray from his mother, Pope Francis said Wednesday in the first in a series of weekly reflections on the Lord’s Prayer.

“The Gospels have given us very vivid portraits of Jesus as a man of prayer,” the pope told the 20,000 pilgrims and tourists gathered in Saint Peter’s Square for his weekly general audience. “Despite the urgency of his mission and the urgency of so many people who claim him, Jesus feels the need to seclude himself in solitude and to pray.”

Despite Christ’s love for the people that follow him, he “disengages himself” and does not end up as a hostage to the expectations of those who have now chosen him as their leader, Francis said. “That is a danger of leaders: to get too attached to people and not to maintain a distance.”

When the people frantically search for Jesus, it turns out that he is “in an isolated place, completely absorbed in prayer,” Francis said.

“In some pages of Scripture, it seems that the prayer of Jesus and his intimacy with the Father govern everything,” the pope said, such as the night spent in the garden of Gethsemane.

The essential point, he said, is Jesus prayed.

“Jesus prayed intensely in public moments, sharing the liturgy of his people, but he also sought quiet places, away from the whirlwind of the world, places that allowed him to descend into the secret of his soul,” he said.

“The last words of Jesus, before expiring on the cross, are words of the Psalms, that is of prayer, of the prayer of the Jewish people: he prayed with the prayers that his mom taught him,” Francis said.

“Jesus prayed as everyone in the world prays,” he said. “Yet, his way of praying also contained a mystery, something that certainly did not escape the eyes of his disciples and we find in the gospels that simple and immediate supplication: ‘Lord, teach us to pray,’” he said.

The apostles saw Jesus pray and they wanted to learn to pray as he did, Francis noted, and Jesus does not refuse their request because he is not jealous of his intimacy with the Father. In fact, he came precisely in order “to introduce us into this relationship with the Father,” he said.

“And so he becomes a teacher of prayer for his disciples, as he certainly wants to be for all of us,” he said. “We should also say, ‘Lord, teach me to pray. Teach me.’”

In this time of Advent, Francis concluded, it would be beautiful to repeat the invocation of the apostles: “Lord, teach me to pray.”

“We do this in this time of Advent, and He certainly will not let our petition fall into emptiness,” he said.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome.