When I read our Gospel today, which begins with Jesus spending the night in prayer with His Father, I was reminded of a true story.
It seems a 15-year-old boy and his father were driving past a tiny airport in a small town in Ohio. Suddenly a low flying small plane spun out of control and nose-dived into the runway. The boy yelled for his father to stop the car and both ran toward the crashed plane. The boy actually pulled the pilot out of the plane. This pilot turned out to be a friend of the boy’s...a 20-year-old student flier who had been practicing takeoffs and landings. Unfortunately, the young man died in the boy’s arms.
When the boy got home, he was naturally filled with grief. He himself had been working part time in a drugstore and was saving every penny so he could take flying lessons, something he’d been wanting since he was a very young boy. His goal was to get his pilot’s license when he turned 16. Now, because of the accident, he was conflicted, but his parents told him the decision would have to be his.
Days later, his mother passed his room and noticed an open notebook on his dresser, a notebook he had kept from childhood. Across the top of the page in big letters was written: “The Character of Jesus”, and beneath was a series of Jesus’ qualities:
- Jesus was sinless,
- he was humble,
- he championed the poor,
- he was unselfish, he was close to God.
The mother saw that in her grieving son’s hour of decision, he had turned to Jesus in prayer for guidance.
Later the boy said to his parents: “Mom and Dad, I hope you will understand, but with God’s help, I must continue to fly”.
That boy was Neil Armstrong and on July 20, 1969, he became the first human being to walk on the moon. Few of us who watched that historic event knew that one of the reasons Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon was because, as a teenager, he had called on Jesus in prayer for strength and guidance to make a crucial decision in his life.
We know from our readings today that the time Jesus spent with His Father in prayer was the lifeblood of his ministry, and the source of his peace and wisdom. Prayer came naturally to him, and he did nothing without consulting his Father in prayer.
Prayer empowered Jesus and enabled him to choose his 12 Apostles. Crowds flocked around him because they sensed God’s presence in him. At the slightest touch from his hand, the sick were healed and demons cast out. All of this was the result of his dedication to prayer.
Jesus continually encourages us to be women and men of prayer. We pray for ourselves, we pray for others, and we pray for our world. May we, like Jesus, continue to draw daily strength and guidance from our earnest prayers to God and our heartfelt relationship with God.
