The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 24, 2022

Luke 11, 1–13

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.”  And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.  And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

“Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”  This request reveals that the person who spoke it recognized that the Lord Jesus was not himself a disciple of John the Baptist or one of the Pharisees.  This shows a significant development in the growth in faith of the disciples.  It also showed the desire to increase as a disciple of the Lord, to pray as the Lord himself taught him.  Finally, it shows, on a very basic level, the human desire to pray in the right way.  Despite the claims of certain people in the West today to be “autonomous”, the human person craves structure.  In part this has to do with the need for security, but more than that, it is about living the right way.  In this request we see the desire to worship God the right way.  The Lord will provide this structure in the prayer he teaches and later at the Last Supper when he orders the Apostles to “do this in memory of me”.  We seek order because the God of Creation is orderly and imposed order on the universe he created.  This structure and order within us enables us to live and even to prosper.  The structure and order we we desire is a sign of God’s existence, his power, and of his essence.

“Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, etc.”  The lectionary translation that follows tries to stick to the prayer as it is traditionally translated, going back five hundred years, but also attempts to render the final petition correctly according to the Greek, though it should more simply be translated as, “Do not subject us to the test”.  The Lord speaks of this test in Matthew 26, 41, when he sees the Apostles sleeping in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Keep watch and pray that you not be put to the test.”  This “test” may differ for each of us, but it will consist of some crisis in which our faith is tested and we must make an enormous effort in the face of dire circumstances and consequences to maintain it.  It may come at work when a boss tries to force us to perform some action which goes against the Lord’s teaching, or when peer pressure mounts on us to conform to the crowd in some sinful undertaking.  It could come while we are faced with being killed for the Faith.  To overcome these tests, which may recur throughout our lives, we must “keep watch”, to be aware of the fact that our faith will be severely tested at some point, and “pray” for the grace to persevere in it.

The Lord’s Prayer, as St. Luke preserves it for us, differs slightly from the prayer as found in St. Matthew’s Gospel.  This may be because the person from whom Luke learned about it remembered it differently, or because the Lord taught his disciples to pray in slightly different ways as he moved from one village to another, for certainly he would have been asked to do this wherever he preached.   The meaning and purpose of the prayer itself is not affected in any way.  

Now that we have this prayer, it is necessary for us to pray it rightly.  We ought not to pray it hurriedly or inattentively.  It is the Lord’s Prayer because he gave it to us.  We repeat the words he gave us to say.  It ought to be said solemnly and with our hearts.  We ought to think carefully about what we are asking from the Father and to conform ourselves to desiring earnestly the things for which we ask.  The prayer primarily asks for the Kingdom of God to come — we are praying for the end of the world and the final judgment, and for all that we need to prepare for it: our “daily bread”, the graces we need, especially that of perseverance, and for the grace to forgive others while we can.

Continuing in prayer for the accomplishment of God’s will in our lives is a lifelong task.  We have to be careful that we are praying for his will to be done and not ours, though, and we pray that we may prefer his will over ours.  He is the all-knowing and all-powerful Father.