Prayer - For Christ also suffered for sins once ... that he might lead you to God. 1 Peter 3:18

Jesus came and accomplished all He did on earth, including His death, in order to lead us to God.  As He says in the following passage,

John 14
 1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. 4 Where [I] am going you know the way.” 5Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”  6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (NABRE - New American Bible Revised Edition)

Jesus says that He has gone to prepare a place for us in the His Father's house
 and that we know the way.  He is the way.  So we need to follow Him to find our way to the Father's house.  And how did Jesus stay in touch and in tune with His Father while on earth?  Through prayer.  In the Gospels we find Him praying frequently.  Some passages just say He went off to pray while other passages record His prayers to His Father.

Reading 2 from last Sunday says of Jesus in Hebrews 5.

⁷ Who in the days of his flesh, with a strong cry and tears, offering up prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death, was heard for his reverence.

⁸ And whereas indeed he was the Son of God, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered:

⁹ And being consummated, he became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation.

Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

 

Jesus went to His Abba, His Father in prayer and that is what He wants us to do.

 

And that is what was missing in my life and what I couldn't make myself do with any regularity.  And I was running around looking for a daddy who could help me face the scary things of life, trying to fill the void with all kinds of substitutes, even though I believed in God and was a Bible-believing evangelical Christian.  And the main reason I was doing this is because prayer is our relationship with the God, the Holy Trinity.  As it says in the opening paragraph 2558 of Part Four Christian Prayer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

“Great is the mystery of the faith!” The Church professes this mystery in the Apostles’ Creed (Part One) and celebrates it in the sacramental liturgy (Part Two). so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father (Part Three). This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer.

 

And I have found and am finding this to be true in my journey with and to God.  And God has provided the way into a life of prayer, which is the relationship with Him.  God becomes real, rather than ethereal and theoretical, through prayer.  And I needed prayers that kept me in prayer and opened me up to God and Him up to me.  Jesus gave his disciples and us the Lord's Prayer, or the Our Father in Catholic lingo as one example of basic prayer.

More later...  May God bless you and draw you ever deeper into His heart of love.