Tuesday in the First Week of Lent, February 20, 2024

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.”

“Do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words.”  The pagans believed that they could bargain with their gods, bribe them, or win them over by flattery.  Jesus speaks contemptuously of this attitude.  This brings to mind the words he spoke through the Prophet Amos: “I hate, and have rejected your festivities: and I will not receive the odor of your assemblies. And if you offer me holocausts, and your gifts, I will not receive them” (Amos 5, 21-22), in which he showed his indignation at prayers and sacrifices offered insincerely and mechanically.  “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”  God requires us to ask for what we need not because he does not know what it is, but in order for us to conform ourselves to his will and to confess our utter dependence on him.

“Our Father, who art in heaven.”  The Lord gives us an example of how we are to pray through this concise prayer in which we ask God for his will to be done in us and for him to forgive us our sins.  It is a prayer for the coming of the Kingdom of which the Lord had come to preach: “[May] thy Kingdom come.”  These are the essentials for which we are to pray: for his will to be done in us, for the forgiveness of our sins, and for his coming again in glory.  The concision of this prayer makes it easy to remember, and prevents us from bargaining, bribery, or flattery.  Familiarity with it can lead to the abuse of rattling it off without thinking, though, and so we must be careful to say it with attention and the devotion of our hearts.

“If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.”  This is not part of the prayer, but a comment on it.  Forgiveness is necessary for salvation: our forgiveness of others, and God’s forgiveness of us.  These are tied together.  To the extent that we forgive, we will be forgiven.  In part, we need to forgive in order to build up our capacity to receive forgiveness; and, in part, forgiveness is a vital way of overcoming the world, and of severing our ties with it.  We need to recall what forgiveness means so that we can do it properly: it is the renunciation of personal revenge on someone who has harmed us though we be innocent of provoking the harm.  With this forgiveness, we overcome our instincts and all that the world would have us do in response, and for this reason it can be a hard work to accomplish.  But then we look at the crucifix and think of how Jesus died so that our sins could be forgiven.