I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth; in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise; I will worship at your holy temple and give thanks to your name. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke (Lk 11:1-13, today's readings).

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples." He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test."

After Jesus teaches the disciples the Lord's Prayer, he shares a parable about a man who goes to a friend at midnight to ask for bread to feed a guest staying at his house while on a journey. The friend eventually gives him the bread although he is reluctant at first. By his persistence, the visitor receives the bread he asks for. Likewise, in another parable, Jesus makes clear that if flawed human parents know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more so does God. "If you then, who are wicked," Jesus says, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" Jesus teaches the disciples more than they ask for: he points the way to his Father in a Spirit of adoption, the one to whom we cry, Abba, Father.

Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Help me be grateful that your will be done and that I have the gift of freely choosing it. Let the persistent cry of the friend in the parable be my cry as well. If not because of friendship with you, Lord, then out of my persistence you never tire of hearing and answering me. Jesus says, "Ask and you will receive. . . . For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds." Give me the grace to call to mind throughout the day that I am the son in the parable who asks his father for a fish. Father in heaven, you are the giver of all good gifts. From the responsorial psalm, let me remember this with complete trust: "Your right hand saves me. The LORD will complete what he has done for me."

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.