Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s selection from the Sermon on the Mount from the gospel of Matthew, we find Jesus instructing his followers on prayer. The passage, not to mention the prayer, is so familiar to us that we might easily pass it over. This would be a mistake, however. As we often hear at Mass, this is the prayer “that Jesus taught us.” This is “the Lord’s Prayer.” This is the prayer of the whole Church.
Jesus instructs his followers not to get lost in a multitude of words, but to pray simply, addressing God as Father. This is an intimate opening, natural for Jesus but remarkable for us. Yet Jesus, the Father’s Son, instructs us also to address God as Father and to pray that God’s name be respected. Jesus models the petitionary prayer that ought to speak to the deepest desires of every Christian: that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven and that God’s kingdom may reign. The “daily bread” of the prayer has long been interpreted Eucharistically; this is the nourishment we seek. The prayer ends with the desire for forgiveness and deliverance from evil.
In some sense, this prayer is a summary of the Christian life. The intimate children of God honor God, want to live for God and in God’s kingdom, want to be nourished by God. We seek to avoid sin and to find forgiveness where we fail. And we do this – we pray this – because of Jesus, God’s only Son, sent to earth out of love to make it possible for us to live this life and to pray this prayer.
For so long in human history, we were divided from God, left with only an incomplete way of living for God. Our sin, the sin of our ancestors, was passed on to every generation without remedy, and the truly holy, such as the prophets Elijah or Elisha, praised in today’s first reading, were few and far between. Repentance was these prophets constant theme, and trust in the one God’s power, revealed in mighty deeds, was the inspiration. But in Jesus, we have been reunited with God as our Father. God himself has provided the remedy for our illness; Jesus died for our sins that we might have eternal life with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In bridging this gap, we have been welcomed back into the family, and taught once again that God is our Father, and we are his children.
The consequences of this are indescribable, for, to be a child of God is to live life to the fullest – to see creation as a gift from God, and to see ourselves as (re)made in God’s image. As you might recall from your own childhood, there is a certain humility in being a child. There is the acknowledgement that you don’t always know or understand everything that’s happening. As a child, you don’t always get what you want when you want it. But the child who has a loving Father can ask with confidence for those things that she knows are in her best interest.
That is precisely what we do every time we say the Lord’s prayer. We confidently ask God for what we know is best for us and for our world. It is the loving prayer of children who seek to do their Father’s will. Today, let us take some time to meditate on the words of the Our Father prayer, and particularly on what it means to be a child of God. This classic prayer is a source of insight and a guide for our life. Let us not skip over it easily!
- Maria Morrow