By Christopher Wells
As he concluded his catechetical cycle on prayer – which began over a year ago, in May 2020 – Pope Francis said “the most beautiful thing to remember” is “the grace that we do not only pray, but that, so to speak, we have been ‘prayed for,’ we have already been received in Jesus’s dialogue with the Father, in communion with the Holy Spirit.”
Prayer, the Pope said, “is one of the most evident features in Jesus’ life… because the dialogue with the Father was the incandescent core of His whole existence.”
Core of Christian proclamation
Although Jesus prayed throughout His earthly life, said the Pope, His prayer became even more intense in the days and hours leading to His Passion and Death, the “central core” of the Christian proclamation, which shed light on the whole of Jesus’ life.
Jesus “was not a philanthropist who took care of human suffering and illness: He was and is much more,” the Pope said. Jesus offers us “total salvation, messianic salvation, that gives hope in the definitive victory of life over death.”
And so, Pope Francis added, “in the last days of His final Passover, we find Jesus fully emersed in prayer: In the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He confidently addressed God as ‘Abba,’ Father, a word expressing intimacy and trust;” and on the Cross, “obscurely shrouded in the silence of God,” where once again He calls on God the Father.
Cross fulfills Father’s gift
The Cross, said Pope Francis, “is the fulfilment of the gift of the Father, who offers the unreserved love of His Son as the price of our salvation: Jesus, laden with all the sin of the world, descends into the abyss of separation from God,” yet still calling on God with His last breath: “Father, into your hands I commend My spirit.”
“To immerse ourselves in the mystery of Jesus’ prayer” we can look to the “priestly prayer” of Jesus at the Last Supper. This prayer, the Pope said, quoting the Catechism, “embraces the whole economy of creation and salvation, as well as His Death and Resurrection.”
We are never alone
Jesus’ prayer becomes even more fervent in that moment, as He intercedes not only for the disciples present there, but also for each one of us, “as if He wanted to say to each of us, ‘I prayed for you at the Last Supper, and on the wood of the Cross.’”
“Even in our most painful sufferings,” the Pope said, “we are never alone.”
“We were willed by Christ Jesus, and even in the hour of His passion, death and resurrection, everything was offered for us.”