Thursday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 16, 2022

Matthew 6, 7-15

Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This is how you are to pray: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

“Do not babble like the pagans.”  The Greek word translated here as “babble” means “to chatter” or “to speak empty words”, that is, to speak words and not mean them.  Greek and Roman religion did not encourage love for the gods.  Prayers and sacrifices were offered regularly but without personal devotion.  Religion took the form of offering what appeased the gods and kept your family and city safe, or for some favor from them.  The Lord Jesus, teaching that we should love God with all our hearts, instructs us that we cannot pray in that way but with love.  Our prayers ought then to resemble more the speech of lovers than that of businessmen.  

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”  Our Father knows what we need, but still wants us to ask him for it, acknowledging that every good thing we have is from him, and also preventing us from taking for granted that God will automatically take care of us without us taking some part in our own welfare.  We should also notice here that the Lord Jesus does not speak as in our role: he says, “Your Father”, not “our”.  When he prays to the Father it is in his own way as his Son.

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, etc.”  The English translation of the prayer which we use in our prayers and at Mass is that found in the Tyndale Bible, produced in 1536.  This version of the Lord’s Prayer was imposed on the English people by King Henry VIII after his break with Rome, and Catholics and Protestants alike used it.  Certain relative pronouns were altered by the Catholic Church in England subsequently but did not change the prayer otherwise.  Interestingly, though William Tyndale claimed that his translation used Greek and Hebrew texts, his translation of the Lord’s Prayer was based on the Old Latin text (as distinct from the Vulgate text) of the Gospel of St. Matthew.  The traditional English translation of the prayer is set bodily in many English language Bibles.  This is incorrect, for while the Old Latin has “daily bread”, the Greek actually has “supersubstantial” bread.  That is, Almighty God always provides us more than we can actually use, as when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes for the crowds: he could have made exactly as much as he knew would be necessary to feed the people, but he wanted to show how much he loved them by giving them even more than that.  The word may also refer directly to the Holy Eucharist, the true Bread that comes down from heaven.  

The prayer the Lord taught his disciples to say asks our Father to bring about the final judgment: “May your kingdom come.”  The form of the verb here is a aorist imperative, as distinct from the present imperative, which would signify an ongoing and continual “coming” of the Kingdom.  The aorist imperative means, Let your Kingdom come once and for all.  St. Augustine reminds us that the Kingdom will come whether we pray for it or not, and that the Lord tells us to pray for it to come so that our desire for it may be kindled.  We may also pray here that God shorten the time for the judgment, although we ought to tread carefully so that we do not shorten our own time on earth to become perfect.  Augustine also says that when we pray for our Father’s Kingdom to come, we are really praying for it to be made manifest to the whole world, for God has ever ruled the earth.  We pray that all people will see God’s rule over them.  But at that time also there shall arrive the judgment.

“If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”  To forgive others is to be forgiven by God.  Forgiveness does not set the wrong-doer free so much as the one who was injured by him.  It frees him from seeking vengeance, from holding grudges, and from becoming a person who looks on others with anger rather than love.  On the other hand, forgiveness by God wipes out our sins as though they had not been.  He charges us to do so little, and he gives us so much.