Thursday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 22, 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 others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

There seem to be two stories of how Jesus teaches the Our Father to his followers.  Here, he teaches it as part of his Sermon on the Mount.  In Luke 11, 1 we read: “And it came to pass that as he was in a certain place praying, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him: Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”  Luke then quotes the Lord, who presents a slightly different form of the prayer.  The most sensible way to understand this as that these are two separate occurrences.  The settings and circumstances of the accounts are very distinct.  And it is likely that many people would have asked the Lord how to pray during the course of the three years of his Public Life.

The prayer itself is meant as a sign of the distinction between the followers of John the Baptist, those of the Pharisees, and others, as we can tell from the quote from Luke.  It is not a prayer for the coming of the Messiah, as John would have taught his disciples, nor for worldly goods, as the Pharisees would have taught theirs, but for the Kingdom of God to come.  That is, for the great judgment at the end of the world and the raising up of the just into heaven.  The main intention of the prayer is made clear at the beginning.  After addressing the heavenly, Father, he is blessed: “Hallowed by thy name.”  Then the leading petition, to which all the others are subordinate which relate to it, is made: “[May] thy kingdom come.”  The petition that follows it is akin to it: “[May] thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  That is, the Father’s will is accomplished by the coming of his kingdom.  The Lord instructs us to pray for our “daily bread”, grace and the Holy Eucharist, which will preserve us until God’s kingdom comes.  We pray for the forgiveness of our sins, which we must have in order to enter heaven, which is conditioned upon our forgiveness of others: “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.”  The petition translated centuries ago as “Lead us not into temptation” sounds alarming to modern ears.  The Greek says, “Put us not to the test.”  We can learn the meaning of the petition by considering the Lord’s admonition to the Apostles at the Last Supper: “Pray that you be not put to the test” (Matthew 26, 41), that is, their faith.  We are praying for perseverance in our faith in Jesus, come what  may, so that we may enter the Kingdom of God.  “Deliver us from evil”, or, “Deliver us from the evil one” concludes the prayer, for we owe our salvation to God alone, and cannot buy it or earn it on our own.

This prayer that Jesus teaches, emblematic of the Christian, is concise and to the point.  May all of our prayers be like this and not the rambles of lawyers who seek to gain a positive outcome for their clients by clouding the issue at hand with an over abundance of words.