Tuesday in the First Week of Lent, February 28, 2023

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 men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

Recent thoughts about the Blessed Sacrament: How wonderful it is that the Covenant which God made with his chosen people through Moses was sealed when Moses sprinkled the blood of animals sacrificed for the occasion on the people, and the New Covenant was sealed by the Blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God — who took on our flesh for this very purpose — when he gave it to the Apostles to drink.  He did not sprinkle them with it for three reasons: that it was itself holy, and not the blood of animals which could only be a sign of his Blood; and so that the Apostles might not be effected in their exterior only by the Blood of the New Covenant, but that it effect them interiorly; and, third, so that the Christians of every generation since then might regularly personally renew this Covenant by drinking the Lord’s Blood and being effected interiorly as they had been.  Now, we should think about this: the Mosaic Law and the modified Law handed down by the Apostles to the Gentiles forbade the drinking of blood: “You shall not eat the blood of any flesh at all” (Leviticus 17, 14) and, “Abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood” (Acts 15, 29).  And God himself gives the reason for why the blood of animals should not be drunk: “For the life of all flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17, 14).  That is, to drink an animal’s blood was to share in the life of that animal: in a sense, to become that animal.  In reading God’s explanation we have to read it as the Jews understood it: its blood was the life of a creature.  There was no sense in ancient times of the blood providing nutrients.  It was life itself.  A man’s blood was considered so precious that it was not supposed to fall on the ground and thereby be contaminated.  And so to drink the Blood of the Son of God is to imbibe his life, and, in a real sense, to become him.  This helps us understand better what he means when he says, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day” (John 6, 55), and, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him” (John 6, 57).  Thus, the sign of the sprinkling of the blood of animals is fulfilled by the drinking of the Blood of the Son of God, and the prohibition against drinking the blood of animals prepares us for the drinking of the Lord’s Blood.  Truly, as the Greek text of Mark 7, 37 says: “He has done all things rightly”.  

The Gospel reading for yesterday’s Mass emphasized the practice of almsgiving as necessary for the life and salvation of the believer in the Lord Jesus.  Today’s reading likewise emphasizes the practice of prayer.  The Lord’s disciples eagerly desired to pray as their Master prayed and at the same time desired the sign of distinction as from the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist that the Lord could deliver to them in their style of their prayer and its principal petitions.  The Lord thus teaches them, first and foremost, to address God as their “Father” — that is, to do so in anticipation of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost when they would be made God’s sons and daughters by adoption.  Following this address, they are to pray to be made ready for the end of the world and the final judgment: for God’s will to be done on earth in the judgment as it was done by the angels in heaven, and that their sins be forgiven as they had forgiven the sins of others.  The final petition: “Deliver us from evil” can as correctly be translated from the Greek as “from the evil one”, which is the result of being delivered from a test of faith so severe that no one could endure it (the traditional “Lead us not into temptation”).

By placing this section of the Gospel alongside of Matthew 25, 32-46, yesterday’s Gospel, the Church teaches us that praying is no more optional than giving alms.  It is something we must practice, and something in which we can find great joy.  For, if to give alms is to give to Jesus Christ, prayer is the touching of his heart with ours.