On the Saturday before the Ascension, Fr Paul reads from John’s Gospel (16: 23-28), in which Jesus says to his disciples ‘anything you ask for from the Father he will grant in my name’.

This discourse in John Chapter 16, that we’ve been reading, is about to come to a close and, Fr Paul says, we’ve come to the issue of unanswered prayer.  The disciples must have felt that with Jesus leaving, their world was falling apart.  This had happened before when Jesus was crucified. Prayers of asking (or intercession) are not always answered or, at least, not obviously.

The model we follow for prayer is the model that Jesus gave us.  Like Jesus, we submit ourselves in prayer to the one who has the power to save us and we await the answer in obedience, confident that God will answer our prayer.
God will answer our prayer in the way that God knows is best for us, in away that is beyond our restricted and faulty human condition; that is the model Jesus has given us.

We submit our prayer. We await the answer in obedience. We await the answer with confidence. God will answer our prayer and deliver our request in the way God thinks is best.  Fr Paul says we might reflect on this for the rest of our day.