8 October 2025 -- Wednesday of the 27th week
Homily
John the Baptist, like other spiritual teachers of his time, including the Pharisees, Sadducees, and teachers of the Law, taught his disciples methods, gestures, and formulas for prayer. So the disciples of Jesus, many of whom had been disciples of John, asked Him one day to teach them to pray ‘as John taught his disciples.’ They were no doubt intrigued by the fact that they often saw Jesus withdrawing, especially at night, to pray in secret, but that He taught them neither method nor formula. Jesus' response, summarised in what we call the ‘Our Father’, is not a ‘prayer formula’ that He invites them to repeat, but rather a very rich teaching on what prayer is. (It is generally accepted by exegetes that this version of the Our Father in Luke, which is shorter than Matthew's, is the most original).