Parents Urged to School Their Children in Prayer

Honduran Cardinal Addresses International Eucharistic Congress

Share this Entry

GUADALAJARA, Mexico, OCT. 15, 2004 (Zenit.org).- During the liturgy of lauds at the International Eucharistic Congress, a Honduran cardinal encouraged parents to school their children in prayer.

“We can and must perfect our prayer life,” Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga told the participants gathered Thursday in the central auditorium of Expo Guadalajara, where the congress is taking place.

“The Eucharist is precisely that. It was instituted in the middle of an enormous prayer of the Lord Jesus, the priestly prayer. It must lead all of us, starting from this congress, to a commitment,” the archbishop of Tegucigalpa added.

Anticipating the encounter of young people with the Eucharistic Jesus, which will take place on Saturday in Zapopan’s Americas Square, the Honduran cardinal said that “young people want to pray, but they want to be taught.”

“Those young disciples of Christ saw him pray and that is why they asked him: Teach us to pray,” the cardinal recalled. He added that “fathers of families, mothers of families must try to develop that prayer life, so that their children can learn it.”

“It is not in the parish, the school, or the religious school where one must learn to pray. It is in the home, in the family where one must learn and continue that education in prayer that will lead to understanding fully the Eucharistic prayer,” he explained.

In an address outside the program, Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga emphasized that “much time has been dedicated to adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament, a privileged way of praying before the sacrament of the altar.”

“A privileged way, also, to learn and to listen to the Lord Jesus who continues to say to us: ‘Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest,'” the cardinal said.

He added: “I believe, therefore, that as a fruit of our Eucharistic Congress, we must all hear that call to improve the quality of our personal prayer, of our community prayer in parishes and religious communities; to grow in this most important element of the spiritual life and to commit ourselves to be persons of prayer that lead this world to pray.”

Share this Entry

ZENIT Staff

Support ZENIT

If you liked this article, support ZENIT now with a donation