Wednesday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time, October 7, 2020

The Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary

Luke 11:1-4

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.”

As it happens, I am leading a discussion on the subject of Prayer in the parish Bible Study, and I am recording it.  With the help of members of the staff here, the talks will be made available on the Blessed Sacrament parish website.  A few people asked for this after Mass on Sunday when the subject for the Bible Study was announced.  We are going all through the subject and we probably won’t finish until close to Christmas.  The Bible Study sessions that I will record will take place on Tuesday evenings.  Last night we talked about what the saints tell us about prayer, and what types of prayer there are.  Two weeks from now, when we meet again, we will talk about how figures such as Abraham, Moses, and even Cain prayed to God.

“Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, etc.”  From reading the Gospels, we know that Jesus preferred to pray on hills, mountains, and in the wilderness.  We see him rising early to pray in the wilderness after all the previous evening curing the people of and around Capernaum (cf. Mark 1, 35).  We see him praying on a mountain all night before choosing the Apostles (cf. Luke 6, 12).  We also remember that the Lord prayed on the Mount of Olives before he was arrested, and that his last words, a prayer, were uttered on the hill of Golgotha.  We can surmise from this that at the time indicated by today’s Gospel reading, Jesus had spent considerable time in prayer outside the towns and villages.  Refreshed by his time spent with his Father, he returns to his followers, one of whom had a request — a prayer — presumably speaking for all: “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”  To this point, Jesus has prayed with his Apostles, but not in a particular way.  He has not taught them a way of praying that would brand them as members of his following, “as John taught his disciples.”  John the Baptist, in teaching his disciples to pray, probably emphasized prayers for the coming of the Messiah, and for recognizing him when he came.  After all, the reason John was sent into the world was to prepare the world for the Messiah’s coming.  The Pharisees and various roving rabbis would also have taught their disciples to pray in a way of their own.  We might ask why Jesus had not taught his disciples to pray shortly after choosing them.  He seems to have waited for them to ask him before doing so.  Perhaps he waited in order to draw the request out of them, letting them realize that they needed  him to give them both the words to pray and the grace to pray the words with.  This notion presupposes that before this time, the Apostles were simply not ready to learn from him how to pray.  This tells us that it is a gift to learn from the Lord himself how we ought to pray.  

The Lord Jesus answered this prayer directly: “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come.”  The Greek verb would be better translated as “may your name be sanctified”.  This is an important distinction.  “Hallowed by your name” is a statement of fact.  “May your name be sanctified”, with the verb in the subjunctive, is a prayer.  The prayer here is that we lowly servants may be granted the grace to sanctify the Lord’s name.  We are able to do this through our words and actions since we bear the name of his Son, Christ, as “Christians”.  Coupled with this, “May your Kingdom come” tells us what the prayer is about: that God the Father’s name may be glorified by our entrance into the Kingdom that will come at the end of the present world,

“Give us each day our daily bread.”  The Greek has: “Give us bread sufficient for the day.”  The use here of “daily bread” differs from the Greek word, which we can translate as “super-substantial”, used by St. Matthew to stand in for the Aramaic word Jesus used.  In fact, “super-substantial” is a word made up to express the word Jesus actually said and is not a proper Greek word.  Luke seems to use the word “daily” in order to avoid using the portmanteau word that would have made little sense to his Greek audience.  “Daily bread” gives the sense that the follower of Jesus lives from day to day, dependent on the Lord for all things.  The one who prays this knows his own unworthiness and does not dare to ask for more than what he needs for the day.  This “daily bread” can also mean the grace necessary for the day’s Christian work as well as for the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.  

“Forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.”  As St. Matthew recalled in his Gospel, the Lord explained, “For if you will forgive men their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offenses. But if you will not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your offenses” (Matthew 6, 14-15).  “Do not subject us to the final test.”  This “test” or “trial” was a severe temptation against the Faith such as one would suffer during persecution.  “Do not subject us” is better understood as “Do not allow us to be subjected.”

While this prayer pertains to the end-times, it begins, significantly, with the word “Father”.  This is what makes the prayer distinctively Christian, that God is called “Father”.  This was the same manner of address as the Son used, reminding us that through baptism we are adopted children of God and co-heirs of eternal life.  We ought to rejoice in this whenever we pray this prayer.

On this day we celebrate the victory of Lepanto, which saved Europe from Muslim slavery in 1571.  Let us rededicate ourselves to praying the Rosary, and to pray for the protection of Christians and the conversion of all to Christ.