Pope Leo’s Prayer Intention for January 2026: For prayer with the Word of God.
Let us pray that praying with the Word of God be nourishment for our lives and a source of hope in our communities, helping us to build a more fraternal and missionary Church.
When people speak of the Word of God, we usually think of the Bible. And rightly so. The Scriptures are God’s Word. This might suggest that when we pray we should pray on the Scriptures and in their words instead of using other prayers and ways of praying. That conclusion is not so certain. Although it is certainly good to bring the Scriptures into our prayer, the Word of God speaks and works in many ways, and praying is complex.
In Christian faith the Word of God refers first of all to Jesus, the Son of God, who shared our life. It follows that praying with the Word of God means praying with Jesus in all the different ways in which he is present in our world. If we are to do that, Jesus must become real to us and help shape our life. Our lives and our prayers should be soaked in the stories of the Gospel, so that when a beggar approaches us we see Jesus reaching out to him in love; when we see someone wounded or hear Muslims spoken of critically, we think of Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan; when we are in pain, we see Jesus on the cross.
In our prayer to God, too, we should feel encouraged to use the words that Jesus used.
They include the words spoken by him in the Gospels, and particularly the Lord’s prayer. They also include the Words of the Scriptures that Jesus used in his own prayer – the Psalms, especially, and the words of the Prophets. When we are seriously ill, we can say with Jesus, ‘Into your hands, Lord, I commend my Spirit’. These words and stories link our own lives with Christ’s life and the Good News of our salvation.
The Gospels also provide us with words to speak to Jesus and to Mary. These words are also taken often from the Psalms and other Scriptural passages. The Hail Mary echoes the Angel’s message to her that she is to bear Jesus. The words attributed to Jesus’ disciples, too, also speak of the many shadows of their relationship to Jesus. Peter’s words, ‘Depart from me for I am a sinful person’ followed by Jesus’ invitation to follow him speak powerfully to us. Thomas’ sardonic words, ‘Let us go to Jerusalem and get killed with him’ is a good prayer when we fall on hard times, as is Peter’s response to Jesus, ‘Master where would we go. You have the words of eternal life.’
The Old Testament, too, was Jesus’ prayer book and the spiritual world in which he lived. The Book of the Psalms provide words of thanksgiving, complaint, ecstasy and request. The stories in the historical books of the Bible provide powerful ways of seeing our relationship to God.
This is not to say that we should discard other ways of praying that we find helpful in our relationship with God. For many of us praying in gardens and parks in simple wonder and thanksgiving at the beauty of God’s world and at God’s calling us is central to our prayer. We find in our own way of praying echoes of Jesus’ own times of silent prayer in hills and of the many passages from the Psalms and the Prophet Isaiah that fill our liturgy.
Pope Leo’s prayer intention does not narrow our ways of praying but expands and brings them together in thanking God for the gift to us in Jesus.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ writes for Jesuit Communications and Jesuit Social Services.
