Tuesday of the First Week of Lent: Matthew 6:7-15
“I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes.” – Edward Everett to Abraham Lincoln, on the occasion of the Gettysburg Address, 1863
In the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday, Jesus tells us how we ought to approach almsgiving, prayer and fasting. Lent began with this because, in the experience of the Church, Lent is the time par excellence when we go back to these fundamentals and renew our commitment to them. In fact, today’s Gospel, where Jesus teaches us the Our Father in Matthew’s Gospel, actually comes right after his words on almsgiving and prayer, and precedes his words on fasting. The Our Father, then, is offered to us as one of the fundamentals of Christian life. It is a prayer taught us by Jesus himself. But it also teaches us how to pray and how to live our Christian life in general. Many of the saints of the Church, such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, viewed the Our Father as a very dense summary of the whole of Christian faith. Contemporary authors, like Scott Hahn and Tom Wright, write of the Our Father in the same way.
Accordingly, mindful of this Lenten context, I offer you in this post some reflections on each phrase of the Our Father. Much more could be said – and has been said – about every word in the Lord’s Prayer. It is my hope that my few words will help open up this amazingly rich prayer for you.
Our Father, who art in heaven – We begin our prayer by reminding ourselves who we are turning to. We are in the presence of a God who is “in heaven”: in other words, who is greater than anything we could say about him. No matter how true our words or ideas about God might be, God surpasses them all. When St. Anselm wrote of God as “that than which none greater can be conceived”, he wasn’t so much outlining a philosophical proof of God’s existence as stating this very truth. God is greater than our hearts and minds. Yet, this same, infinitely great God is also “Father”. The source of our life, the parent of us all. More intimate to us than we are to ourselves, the Father knows our hearts and souls better than we do.
The Father is also called “Our Father”. Not merely mine or yours, but ours. My faith is not my personal plaything that I can tweak to my heart’s content. God is “ours”, just as faith in God is “ours”. This faith is something we have received, in Scripture and Tradition. It accords with the truest desires of our own hearts. It is a faith that is greater than I am, just as God is greater than I am.
Hallowed be thy name – We usually think of this in reference to what, to us, seems to be its opposite: when we ‘take the name of the Lord in vain’. By this, we usually mean using God’s name as a ‘swear word’. But the meaning of this phrase, though it surely includes a spoken respect for the name of God, includes much more.
What is God’s name? In Exodus 3, when Moses asks this question, God at first responds, “I am who am”. But that entire chapter – indeed the entire Book of Exodus – has to do with the name of God. How so? When God later gives the Israelites the Ten Commandments – and many other laws and precepts – God usually says something like “I am the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt”. Part of God’s own name, we can say, is that God frees his people from slavery – not simply from Egypt (or any nation), but from the power of sin. God commands his people to have a special care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger (the most helpless people of that time) because God is the One who freed them when they were utterly helpless. In this case, one of the ways we “hallow God’s name” is by our acts of compassion and justice for others, especially for those who are most vulnerable and despised today.
We can go further. Jesus gives himself a host of names: “I am the light of the world”; “I am the resurrection and the life”; “I am the Good Shepherd”; “I am the Bread of Life”; to name but a few. Hallowing God’s name also means believing that Jesus, as the Son of God, truly is all of these things, and living our lives accordingly. It means, at the very least, a deep faith in the gift of the sacraments, in which we experience Jesus as all these things (and more) in an especially powerful, effective manner.
Thy Kingdom come – Jesus came to announce the Kingdom of God. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke agree that this was the very first thing Jesus preached about. The coming of the Kingdom was the ultimate hope of God’s people, Israel. Isaiah prayed that God would “rend the heavens and come down”. He and other prophets saw a day when God would once again bless Israel by gathering its scattered tribes together once again, and even inviting the pagan nations to also come and join this renewed people.
In Jesus, the Kingdom of God comes in flesh. He heals all that is wounded, drives away all that is harmful or evil, and is the way to the Father. He calls on us to repent and accept God’s rule in our lives. The Kingdom is here, but it is at the same time not yet here. God rules in the hearts of all who believe, but that rule is not yet manifested to all. Creation still groans, as Paul says, as it awaits the day. So, we pray that this Kingdom, already here in a sense, will come in its fullness. This prayer also implies our commitment to repent. We examine our lives and see where God does not yet rule. We then turn these areas of our lives over to God, pray that his Kingdom will come in our hearts now, and in all of creation one day.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven – This follows logically from our prayer that God’s Kingdom will come. ‘Heaven’ is the place where God already rules; the place where there is no evil. It is the home of the angels and saints. In this context, it’s good to remember that, at the very end of the Book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth. Earth has been cleansed, and now has become part of heaven, so to speak. This is ultimately what we are praying for here. It is also a commitment on our part that we will do God’s will, just as Jesus did the Father’s will.
Give us this day our daily bread – We are trying to do God’s will in a society and world that, largely, ignores or actively opposes God’s will. No easy task. At the same time, we are a people with a future. God has promised us victory even over death if we have faith in him. Besides this, God has also promised us that he knows what we need every day, and that he will give us all that we trusty need. This part of the Our Father combines our need and our hope. We know that we cannot remain faithful on our own steam alone, and so we need God’s grace. We also know that God promises to feed us with the best of wheat, and so we live in hope. These promises of God are best met for us now in the Eucharist, of course, which is our spiritual manna for the journey of faith.
We should also note that it is this hope that enables us to fast and sacrifice. We can fast from food at times, as we know that we live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Some can choose not to marry and embrace celibacy, because they hope in a God who is Trinity, who is family, and in the promise of Christ that everyone who is a disciple is already a member of God’s family. We can give alms generously, as we know that God answers all our true needs and has entrusted to us what we have that we might be a sign of God’s gracious love to the world.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us – It is only with the confidence that comes from knowing that God gives us our daily bread that we can move to this part of the Our Father. Very often, when someone has sinned against us, we may feel as though they have taken something essential from us that cannot be restored. However, if God gives us our daily bread, we need not be taken in by such a thought. God already gives us what we need. In fact, our very act of forgiving – even (and especially) when offered to someone who seems undeserving – opens us up to this “daily bread” of God in a most profound way. Healed ourselves, we offer this same healing to anyone who has harmed us. We witness to Christ, by whose suffering, death and resurrection has already knocked down all that divides us and has built bridges between us. We need to trust his handiwork, cross those bridges in offering and accepting forgiveness, and be truly healed. Did you ever notice that it is often easier to grant forgiveness than to ask for it or to receive it unbidden? Not only do we forgive, we ask forgiveness – of God, and of anyone else whom our sins have injured. Seeking forgiveness is also an act of bridge-building.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil – In last Sunday’s post, I wrote of how God sometimes tests us, as he tested Abraham and even his own Son. Here, interestingly, Jesus teaches us to pray that we not be put to the test by the Father. God doesn’t tempt anyone in the sense of leading them to sin. In the Our Father, “temptation” is better translated “test”. This is a prayer of great humility on our part. It is an acknowledgment that we may not be up to the test. Indeed, Jesus’ own disciples were not up to the test of Gethsemane. Later on, they would pass the test. It is also a profound act of faith. In it, we profess our own inability to pass the test. Yet, implicitly, we also affirm our faith that if God leads us to the test anyway, we will have the ability to be faithful. The Father gives us our daily bread so that we might do his will, and pass the test when he leads us to it.
One more observation on this phrase: in praying it, we reject any rash actions on our own part. We don’t choose the “test” or rush headlong into some difficult thing just to prove how string or steadfast we are. God chooses the test, not us.
So there you have it. Nearly 2000 words about a prayer that is less than sixty words! And yet, I could have said much more. May these words help you to appreciate just a little more the amazing depth and breadth of these few words that Jesus has given us, words by which we learn to pray; words by which we learn to live.