From: Matthew 6:7-15
An Upright Intention in Almsgiving, Prayer and Fasting (Continuation)
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Commentary:
7-8. Jesus condemns the superstitious notion that long prayers are needed to at-
tract 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 commenta-
ries full of poetry and wisdom. The early Christians, taught by the precepts of sal-
vation, and following the divine commandment, centered their prayer on this sub-
lime 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 rea-
lized 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 Com-
mandments and the Sacraments, as the basis of Christian catechesis. Catechu-
mens were introduced to the life of prayer by the “Our Father”, and our cate-
chisms 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 ty-
rannical 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 co-
ming 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 Hea-
ven.” (Matthew 7:21). “Anyone, then, who sincerely repeats this petition, ‘Fiat vo-
luntas 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 pre-
sent 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 some-
thing 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 rea-
lizing that it is God who is providing this support, the Christian avoids being wor-
ried about material needs. Jesus does not want us to pray for wealth or to be at-
tached 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 ha-
ving 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 ma-
terial 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. Recog-
nizing 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 for-
sake 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 Je-
sus 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 o-
thers, 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, ha-
ven’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 lo-
ving 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 from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
| First reading | Isaiah 55:10-11 © |
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| Psalm | Psalm 33:4-7,16-19 © |
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| Gospel Acclamation | Mt4:4 |
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| Gospel | Matthew 6:7-15 © |
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