From: Matthew 6:7-15
An Upright Intention in Almsgiving, Prayer and Fasting (Continuation)
(Jesus said to His disciples:) [7] "And in praying do not heap up empty
phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for
their many words. [8] Do not be like them, for your Father knows what
you need before you ask Him. [9] Pray then like this: Our Father who
art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. [10] Thy kingdom come, Thy will
be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. [11] Give us this day our daily
bread; [12] And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors; [13] And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil. [14] For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly
Father also will forgive you; [15] but if you do not forgive men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
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Commentary:
7-8. Jesus condemns the superstitious notion that long prayers are
needed to attract God's attention. True piety is not so much a matter
of the amount of words as of the frequency and the love with which the
Christian turns towards God in all the events, great or small, of his
day. Vocal prayer is good, and necessary; but the words count only if
they express our inner feelings.
9-13. The "Our Father" is, without any doubt, the most commented-on
passage in all Sacred Scripture. Numerous great Church writers have
left us commentaries full of poetry and wisdom. The early Christians,
taught by the precepts of salvation, and following the divine
commandment, centered their prayer on this sublime and simple form of
words given them by Jesus. And the last Christians, too, will raise
their hearts to say the "Our Father" for the last time when they are on
the point of being taken to Heaven. In the meantime, from childhood to
death, the "Our Father" is a prayer which fills us with hope and
consolation. Jesus fully realized how helpful this prayer would be to
us. We are grateful to Him for giving it to us, to the Apostles for
passing it on to us and, in the case of most Christians, to our mothers
for teaching it to us in our infancy. So important is the Lord's
Prayer that from apostolic times it has been used, along with the
Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Sacraments, as the basis of
Christian catechesis. Catechumens were introduced to the life of
prayer by the "Our Father", and our catechisms today use it for that
purpose.
St. Augustine says that the Lord's Prayer is so perfect that it sums up
in a few words everything man needs to ask God for (cf. "Sermon", 56).
It is usually seen as being made up of an invocation and seven
petitions--three to do with praise of God and four with the needs of
men.
9. It is a source of great consolation to be able to call God "our
Father"; Jesus, the Son of God, teaches men to invoke God as Father
because we are indeed His children, and should feel towards Him in that
way.
"The Lord [...] is not a tyrannical master or a rigid and implacable
judge; He is our Father. He speaks to us about our lack of generosity,
our sins, our mistakes; but He also does so in order to free us from
them, to promise us His friendship and His love [...]. A child of God
treats the Lord as his Father. He is not obsequious and servile, he is
not merely formal and well-mannered; he is completely sincere and
trusting" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 64).
"Hallowed by Thy name": in the Bible a person's "name" means the same
as the person himself. Here the name of God means God Himself. Why
pray that His name be hallowed, sanctified? We do not mean
sanctification in the human sense--leaving evil behind and drawing
closer to God--for God is Holiness Itself. God, rather, is sanctified
when His holiness is acknowledged and honored by His creatures--which
is what this first petition of the "Our Father" means (cf. "St. Pius
Catechism", IV, 10).
10. "Thy Kingdom come": this brings up again the central idea of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ--the coming of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God
is so identical with the life and work of Jesus Christ that the Gospel
is referred to now as the Gospel of Jesus Christ, now as the Gospel of
the Kingdom (Matthew 9:35). On the notion of the Kingdom of God see
the commentary on Matthew 3:2 and 4:17. The coming of the Kingdom of
God is the realization of God's plan of salvation in the world. The
Kingdom establishes itself in the first place in the core of man's
being, raising him up to share in God's own inner life. This elevation
has, as it were, two stages--the first, in this life, where it is
brought about by grace; the second, definitive stage in eternal life,
where man's elevation to the supernatural level is fully completed. We
for our part need to respond to God spontaneously, lovingly and
trustingly.
"Thy will be done": this third petition expresses two desires. The
first is that man identify humbly and unconditionally with God's
will--abandonment in the arms of his Father God. The second that the
will of God be fulfilled, that man cooperate with it in full freedom.
For example, God's will is to be found in the moral aspect of the
divine law--but this law is not forced on man. One of the signs of the
coming of the Kingdom is man's loving fulfillment of God's will. The
second part of the petition, "on earth as it is in Heaven", means that,
just as the angels and saints in Heaven are fully at one with God's
will, so--we desire--should the same thing obtain on earth.
Our effort to do God's will proves that we are sincere when we say the
words, "Thy will be done." For our Lord says, "Not every one who says
to Me, `Lord, Lord' shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does
the will of My Father who is in Heaven." (Matthew 7:21). "Anyone,
then, who sincerely repeats this petition, `Fiat voluntas tua', must,
at least in intention, have done this already" (St. Teresa of Avila,
"Way of Perfection", chapter 36).
11. In making this fourth petition, we are thinking primarily of our
needs in this present life. The importance of this petition is that it
declares that the material things we need in our lives are good and
lawful. It gives a deep religious dimension to the support of life:
what Christ's disciple obtains through his own work is also something
for which he should implore God--and he should receive it gratefully as
a gift from God. God is our support in life: by asking God to support
him and by realizing that it is God who is providing this support, the
Christian avoids being worried about material needs. Jesus does not
want us to pray for wealth or to be attached to material things, but to
seek and make sober use of what meets our needs. Hence, in Matthew as
well as in Luke (Luke 11:2), there is reference to having enough food
for every day. This fourth petition, then, has to do with moderate use
of food and material things--far from the extremes of opulence and
misery, as God already taught in the Old Testament "Give me neither
poverty nor riches; feed me with the food which is needful for me, lest
I be full, and deny Thee, and say, `Who is the Lord?' or lest I be
poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God" (Proverbs 30:8).
The Fathers of the Church interpreted the bread asked for here not only
as material food but also as referring to the Blessed Eucharist,
without which our spirit cannot stay alive.
According to the "St. Pius V Catechism" (cf. IV, 13, 21) the Eucharist
is called our daily bread because it is offered daily to God in the
Holy Mass and because we should worthily receive it, every day if
possible, as St. Ambrose advises: "If the bread is daily, why do you
take it only once a year [...]? Receive daily what is of benefit to
you daily! So live that you may deserve to receive it daily!" ("De
Sacramentis", V, 4).
12. "Debts": clearly, here, in the sense of sin. In the Aramaic of
Jesus' time the same word was used for offense and debt. In this fifth
petition, then, we admit that we are debtors because we have offended
God. The Old Testament is full of references to man's sinful
condition. Even the "righteous" are sinners. Recognizing our sins is
the first step in every conversion to God. It is not a question of
recognizing that we have sinned in the past but of confessing our
present sinful condition. Awareness of our sinfulness makes us realize
our religious need to have recourse to the only One who can cure it.
Hence the advantage of praying insistently, using the Lord's Prayer to
obtain God's forgiveness time and again.
The second part of this petition is a serious call to forgive our
fellow-men, for we cannot dare to ask God to forgive us if we are not
ready to forgive others. The Christian needs to realize what this
prayer implies: unwillingness to forgive others means that one is
condemning oneself (see the notes on Matthew 5:23-24 and 18:21:21-35).
13. "And lead us not into temptation": "We do not ask to be totally
exempt from temptation, for human life is one continuous temptation
(cf. Job 7:1). What, then, do we pray for in this petition? We pray
that the divine assistance may not forsake us, lest having been
deceived, or worsted, we should yield to temptation; and that the grace
of God may be at hand to succor us when our strength fails, to refresh
and invigorate us in our trials" ("St. Pius V Catechism", IV, 15, 14).
In this petition of the "Our Father" we recognize that our human
efforts alone do not take us very far in trying to cope with
temptation, and that we need to have humble recourse to God, to get the
strength we need. For, "God is strong enough to free you from
everything and can do you more good than all the devils can do you
harm. All that God decrees is that you confide in Him, that you draw
near Him, that you trust Him and distrust yourself, and so be helped;
and with this help you will defeat whatever hell brings against you.
Never lose hold of this firm hope [...] even if the demons are legion
and all kinds of severe temptations harass you. Lean upon Him, because
if the Lord is not your support and your strength, then you will fall
and you will be afraid of everything" (St. John of Avila, "Sermons, 9,
First Sunday of Lent").
"But deliver us from evil": in this petition, which, in a way, sums up
the previous petitions, we ask the Lord to free us from everything our
enemy does to bring us down; we cannot be free of him unless God
Himself free us, in response to our prayers.
This sentence can also be translated as "Deliver us from the Evil One",
that is to say, the devil, who is in the last analysis the author of
all evils to which we are prone.
In making this request we can be sure that our prayer will be heard
because Jesus Christ, when He was on the point of leaving this world,
prayed to the Father for the salvation of all men: "I do not pray that
Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep
them from the evil one" (John 17:15).
14-15. In verses 14 and 15 St. Matthew gives us a sort of commentary of
our Lord on the fifth petition of the "Our Father".
A God who forgives is a wonderful God. But if God, who is thrice-holy,
has mercy on the sinner, how much more ought we to forgive others--we
sinners, who know from our own experience the wretchedness of sin. No
one on earth is perfect. Just as God loves us, even though we have
defects, and forgives us, we should love others, even though they have
defects, and forgive them. If we wait to love people who have no
defects, we shall never love anyone. If we wait until others mend
their ways or apologize, we will scarcely ever forgive them. But then
we ourselves will never be forgiven. "All right: that person has
behaved badly towards you. But, haven't you behaved worse towards
God?" ([St] J. Escriva, "The Way", 686).
Thus, forgiving those who have offended us makes us like our Father,
God: "In loving our enemies there shines forth in us some likeness to
God our Father, who, by the death of His Son, ransomed from everlasting
perdition and reconciled to Himself the human race, which before was
most unfriendly and hostile to Him" ("St. Pius V Catechism", IV, 14,
19).
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Reprinted with permission from Four Courts Press and Scepter Publishers, the U.S. publisher.
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