Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert where he prayed and fasted for forty days and forty nights, after which he was tempted by the devil.

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones become loaves of bread,” says the devil to Jesus, who replies:

“It is written,‘Not on bread alone does one live, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

As we enter the forty days of Lent, we try to follow Jesus’ example of prayer and fasting.

PRAYER: What is prayer, and how should we pray? Most Rev. Robert Barron defines prayer as: “Intimate communion and conversation with God. Judging from Jesus’ own life, prayer is something that we ought to do often, especially at key moments of our lives.

Well, how should we pray? What does it look like? We need to pray with faith, and according to Jesus’ model, we pray with forgiveness. The efficacy of prayer seems to depend on the reconciliation of differences.

We also need to pray with persistence and not give up too easily as St. Augustine says, ‘God sometimes delays in giving us what we want because he wants our hearts to expand’.

Finally, we must pray in Jesus’ name. In so doing, we are relying on his influence with the Father, trusting that the Father will listen to him.”

Source: Bishop Robert Barron, wof@wordonfire.org