Letter from the Prelate (10 August 2019)

Now starting his pastoral visit to Canada, Monsignor Ocáriz reminds us of the importance of prayer: "Our dialogue with Jesus Christ opens up new perspectives for us, new ways to see things that are always more filled with hope."

My dear children: may Jesus watch over my daughters and sons for me!

How often we have meditated on our Lord’s words that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Lk 18:1)!

When the apostles asked Jesus to teach them to pray, our Lord answered, “When you pray, say: Father…” And Jesus started his own prayer by directing himself to the Father: with praise and thanksgiving (cf. Mt 11:25-26; Jn 11:41); at the Last Supper (cf. Jn 17:5); in Gethsemane (cf. Lk 22:42); and on the Cross (cf. Lk 23:34&46). St. Josemaria wanted everyone “to pray genuinely, as God's children.”[1] In union with Jesus Christ—through Him and in Him—we reach God the Father (cf. Jn 14:6) with simplicity, sincerity and trust in his omnipotent love.

To take up a life of prayer every day is to allow ourselves to be accompanied, in the good moments and the bad, by the Person who best knows and loves us. Our dialogue with Christ opens up new perspectives for us, new ways to see things that are always more filled with hope. “Now you see,” our Father wrote to us in 1967, “that this is the only means we have to do everything: prayer.”[2]

I ask the Holy Spirit to constantly renew—and now in a special way—the manner in which we pray. The initiative is his: “the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer.”[3]

Continue to accompany me during my trip through the United States and Canada. Its spiritual effectiveness depends on the prayer of each and every one of you.

Your Father blesses you with all his affection,

Vancouver, 10 August 2019


[1] Friends of God, no. 243.

[2] Letter, 19 March 1967, no. 149.

[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2567.