is difficult, easy... For it is impossible, utterly impossible, for the man who prays eagerly and invokes God ceaselessly ever to sin.39 Those who pray are certainly saved; those who do not pray are certainly damned.4° 2745 Prayer and Christian life are inseparable, for they concern the same love and the same renunciation, proceeding from love; the same filial and loving conformity with the Father’s plan of love; the same transforming union in the Holy Spirit who conforms us

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more and more to Christ Jesus; the same love for all men, the love

with which Jesus has loved us. ‘Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he [will] give it to you. This I command you, to love one another.’4’ He ‘prays without ceasing’ who unites prayer to works and good works to prayer. Only in this way can we consider as realizable the principle of praying without ceasing.42

Article 3

THE PRAYER OF THE HOUR OF JESUS


2746 When ‘his hour’ came, Jesus prayed to the Father.43 His prayer, the longest transmitted by the Gospel, embraces the whole economy of creation and salvation, as well as his death and Resurrection. The prayer of the Hour of Jesus always remains his own,

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just as his Passover ‘once for all’ remains ever present in the liturgy

of his Church. 2747 Christian tradition rightly calls this prayer the ‘priestly’ prayer ofJesus. It is the prayer of our high priest, inseparable from his sacrifice, from his passing over (Passover) to the Father to whom he is wholly ‘consecrated’.44 2748 In this Paschal and sacrificial prayer, everything is recapitu 518 kited in Christ45 God and the world; the Word and the flesh; eternal life and time; the love that hands itself over and the sin that betrays it; the disciples present and those who will believe in him

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by their word; humiliation and glory. It is the prayer of unity.

2749 Jesus fulfilled the work of the Father completely; his prayer, like his sacrifice, extends until the end of time. The prayer of this hour fills the end—times and carries them towards their consummation. Jesus, the Son to whom the Father has given all things, has