What would Jesus really like for lent is a question that was on my heart as I sat in adoration last night.

Then He spoke to me:

“Jesus 

My child, as this period or prayer begins the thing that I thirst for the most is family and community prayer.

How few families pray together, united in love and forgiveness with me and interceding for the world.

How beautiful it is when I see parents and grandparents and children all praying together and yet how sad when although under the same roof, family members avoid eachother eachother and refuse to pray together.

Family prayer is so very powerful and it also provides you with the opportunity to love and know your neighbour.

My children, I desire you to be children of love and prayer, united in prayer and in love for one another. This my little ones is the greatest witness that you can give the world of my presence and my transforming love.

Gather together my children this lenten period and pray together in your homes and in your communities and be lights of love and hope that your world is in such desperate need of.“

It’s true that we live in a society of everyone doing their own thing and praying in their own way which of course is good and necessary too and yet Jesus thirsts for us to pray together also.

Very few families and even vert few catholic families pray together regularly. In all my years travelling this is one thing that I noticed because usually it’s the wife that wants to pray and the husband doesn’t and so the compromise is that she prays on her own and comes out when she’s finished!

I know this dynamic all too well as my parents were like that! As far as my dad was concerned, prayer and emotional stuff was women’s business and when the parents are divided, the house will be divided!

And it’s not just in homes, the same can happen in communities and when prayer is stopped to “keep the peace”, it really is the evil spirit that wins because prayer is the true source of peace.

And so this lent Jesus is thirsting for us to pray together as families and communities and for us to be united and this requires humility and sacrifices of time and personal preferences.

Jesus thirsts for us to be united in love for both him and for eachother and for this love and prayer to be a light of hope to the whole world.

So let us do our best over this lent to invite others to pray, to unite communities and families in love and to be lights of love to all around us.

Michael