The Our Father

Sermon on the Mount, Fra Angelico

Part 13 in our series on the Our Father.

This week’s line from the Our Father reminds us of our fragility. As we move from the heights of hallowing God’s name to the humdrum of our ordinary life, this experience of fragility comes to be one of the most prominent parts of our spiritual life.

To pray “Lead us not into temptation” means, above all, acknowledging the reality of temptation. We are in-between people. We want God’s will to be done; we long for his kingdom; we even acknowledge the holiness of his name – but truth be told, other things are often more attractive. We are tempted.

To situate temptation within the Our Father is to appreciate more deeply what sin means. It is not just that we are tempted to break the rules, or to reject God outright, whatever that means. Rather, our temptation is, for example, to long for other things more than for his kingdom. This takes us back to all our previous reflections. In the case of the kingdom, we see that the temptation is not only against the assertions of his will, but against a place of peace and order, against a world ruled by the mercy of Jesus. Truth be told, we often long for – we are often tempted by – visions of something else that sounds better, whether it’s the domination of creature comforts or the assertion of our will over others.

We say thy will be done, but honestly, we often prefer the brute assertion of our will, or we abandon the wisdom and the love that are his will, and say “God won’t mind; his rules aren’t that important anyway.”

And his name? Above all, we are actually tempted to live as if God is not Father.

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What is perhaps most interesting about temptation is that it presumes that we want to do the right thing. What a strange creature we must be, to be tempted. We haven’t rejected God outright – and yet we still turn away from him in our actions. We know that’s not who we want to be, but we do it anyway. So very fragile.

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But the first half of this prayer expresses our fragility even more deeply. “Lead us not.” Surely this is the strangest part of the whole Our Father. It is not “lead us away from temptation,” nor “deliver us” from temptations already present. We will pray “deliver us from evil” in a moment, but here the verb is “leading into” and our request is “please don’t lead us.”

“Do not abandon me” is in fact a constant thread in the prayers of the Bible. As if God could abandon us.

Now, God never abandons us. Even the great cry of anguish in Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why you have forsaken me” (v. 1) changes gradually to “be not far from me” (v. 19) and finally “they who seek the Lord will praise him . . . for the kingdom is the Lord’s” (vv. 26 and 28).

Indeed, it’s a strange truth that there would be no point in praying to a God who you think has abandoned you. Crying out “My God” already presumes that he is still there. God never abandons us.

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And yet we so radically depend upon him that we can almost describe everything that goes wrong as God abandoning us. I am weak and he is strong: with him, all things can be conquered, without him, nothing.

And temptation is so powerful, our ability to live the Our Father we profess so weak, that rather than saying, “we’ll just try really hard,” we say “please, don’t let me fall.”

There are, perhaps, two sides to this. On the one hand, we do not want to be in a place of temptation. “Lead us not into” partly means “I do not want to be there.” If I am in the place of temptation, I will fall. Don’t let me be there.

On the other hand, we are so fragile that even falling onto the wrong path seems like God abandoning us, or, even worse, actively putting us in harm’s way.

The point is not to blame God for what goes wrong. The point is to profess our absolute dependence on him. Notice, in fact, that the Our Father doesn’t make the slightest effort to justify God, to explain why it isn’t his fault. Its focus is much more practical: on our absolute dependence on God to keep us on the path of his holy name, his kingdom, his wise and loving will.

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What would change in your life if you really believed that you are weak and he is strong?

Sermon on the Mount, Fra Angelico

Part 10 in our series on the Our Father.

Our prayer takes an unexpected turn. After several lines about the Father’s kingdom, will, name, we have begun to ask for what we need. But Jesus instructs us to immediately move on to asking for spiritual things. Immediately turning from “our daily bread” to “forgive us” underlines how little we ask for with our daily bread. We don’t get to go on asking for things.

Bread is the only thing the Our Father lets us ask for for ourselves. Indeed, by framing it in terms of other goods, the bread sounds more oriented toward our battle with “trespasses” and “evil” than with merely sustaining our earthly life.

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Forgiveness is a sign of strength. God is powerful enough to provide our daily bread. But he is more powerful than that. He is powerful enough to forgive our sins. God’s forgiveness is a sign that our sin doesn’t hurt him, doesn’t in any way limit his strength.

This is an important point. It is not as if the Cross and Resurrection show a God powerful enough to do physical miracles – like raising the dead – but not strong enough to overcome man’s sin; or, powerful enough to overcome the consequences (sin kills) but not powerful enough to overcome the cause (sin). God’s forgiveness is a sign of his strength. If we are asked to forgive, it is a sign that we somehow share in that strength.

The German word behind our “forgiveness” means “to give and give and give.” God is wealthy enough to keep giving, rich enough to become poor for us without fear.

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Yet forgiveness also recognizes that there is a trespass. We don’t forgive or ask forgiveness where no wrong has been done. Like Confession, our asking forgiveness simultaneously acknowledges that God is bigger than our sin and that sin is a real problem.

Some English translations say “debts” instead of “trespasses.” Matthew’s Gospel gives a longer version of the prayer, basically the one we use. As he often does, Luke shortens it to its essence. In Matthew it’s “debts,” in Luke it’s “sins” or “trespasses” – though he then says “as we forgive those indebted to us.”

In English, and even more in Greek and Latin, the word debt is rooted in the word “ought.” To “owe” is to “ought to give.” We moderns tend to think of monetary debt as purely arbitrary. To say we “owe” it to God sounds like he is a miser, counting every coin that crosses his desk. But what we are saying is not about him, not about him demanding something, but about us: we ought to do it. We say, “forgive us our oughts,” forgive us for the things we ought to have done but haven’t.

Part of what we are meant to learn from asking forgiveness, whether in the Our Father or in Confession, is precisely that there is such a thing as “ought.” That it’s not a matter of how much we can get away with, how little God needs from us, but that some things are just right.

“It is right and just,” we say in the Mass. When we love, we give simply because it’s the right thing to do. No amount of forgiveness makes us happy to be unjust. In a sense, this is what Christian maturity is all about: learning to do what is “right and just,” what we “ought” to do, not because otherwise we’ll hurt God or make him angry – no, he is always strong enough to forgive us – but because it is right. To recognize that along with his “forgiveness” there is our “ought.” That is love.

Sin doesn’t hurt God. But it does hurt us, because it simply is a failure to love, and love is everything.

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Finally, the word “forgiveness” does not quite do justice to the word in Latin and Greek. In fact, we ask God not just to “forgive” us, but to “put away” our sins. Perhaps “remit” sounds too much like accounting, but perhaps “remission of sins” can be a better translation, because it keeps this alive.

Think of it this way: “forgiveness” is all about the forgiver. It doesn’t affect the other person. But “put away our sins” is at least ambiguous: it’s not clear whether he’s putting them “away” from him, or from us.

In fact, the divine remission of our sins doesn’t affect God, it affects us. This is near the heart of the mystery of grace: that we can ask God to “send our sins away” from us. To heal us, and make us good.

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How have you grown in your sense of “ought”?

Sermon on the Mount, Fra Angelico

Part 9 in our series on the Our Father.

The Lord’s Prayer does not encourage us to ask for a Mercedes-Benz. “Our daily bread” is right at the middle of the prayer, and it sets the tone for how we relate to Our Father.

First, it is remarkably late. The Lord’s Prayer puts our focus first on God: his name, his kingdom, his will. We begin by asking not for ourselves, but for his glory.

Notice that this puts “our” daily bread in an interesting light, too. Throughout the prayer, the word “our” keeps us very much socially focused. I pray not just for my daily bread, but for that of those around me, for all those who call God, or could call God, Father. But by postponing our daily bread until so late in the prayer, Jesus draws us to a deeper sense of the “our.” It is not “our bread” for “our kingdom,” but for his. The kingdom of the God who tells us to call him Father and provides us our daily bread is a loving kingdom, a more generous kingdom than we would be inclined to pray for. The postponing of the daily bread frames that petition in a bigger picture, of God’s goodness throughout his kingdom.

And then, when we finally move on from “thine” to “ours,” when we pierce the clouds to this world below, we very quickly move on from our daily bread. This is not like sitting on Santa’s lap: “and then I want a new refrigerator, and a kitchen renovation, and then a trip to the Bahamas.” No, quickly after we mention our daily bread, we go on to much humbler, and more specifically spiritual goods: forgiveness, and freedom from sin and evil.

Finally, our daily bread itself is such a humble petition. Jesus has us stand in the posture of St. Francis, every day asking only for what we need, and only for today. Not a membership in the wine-of-the-month club: we have bigger concerns, things we love so much more than that. If someone gives us such a membership (my birthday is coming up!) let us never forget that it is so much less precious than my daily bread, or my longing for God’s kingdom, and for a heart that forgives.

“Our daily bread” reminds us how little we really need, and how our relationship with Our Father is about much more wonderful things than what we often focus on.

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On the other hand, Jesus does tell us to ask for our daily bread, and that is also interesting. In a sense, not to ask God for what we truly need is disobedient – or, more deeply, a violation of our relationship with Our Father. He does provide, and he wants to provide. We don’t ask Daddy to buy us a fancy car, but we do live in the household where he will always take care of us.

This, in fact, is an interesting flipside to Christian simplicity. On the one hand, as we saw above, we should have a kind of “contempt” for the things of this world – or, let us say, the things that are only of this world. Fancy cars and kitchen renovations you can’t take with you. But things like love and forgiveness and freedom from sin (defined in terms of love and forgiveness) are things of both heaven and this world, things we should not have contempt for! So the Our Father teaches us to love the things of this world that matter, and not the things that don’t.

But on the other hand, if we live true Christian simplicity, we will always need to rely on Our Father, even for our daily bread. If we are truly generous with those around us puts us always in a place of needing to beg God to take care of us. Let us feed our neighbors, knowing that Our Father will always feed us.

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Finally, what is our daily bread? What does sustain us?

On the one hand, this prayer is an important reminder that we have bodies. We really do need to eat (and sleep, etc.)!

On the other hand, Jesus says, “my food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34) and that he himself is the bread from heaven that will satisfy our hunger and thirst. Let us pray, too, that union – communion – with the good God will be our deepest sustenance, the source of our strength.

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What kind of “daily bread” do you need to pray for?

Sermon on the Mount, Fra Angelico

Part 8 in our series on the Our Father.

These last several weeks, we have been noting the descending movement of the Our Father, from Our Father in heaven to the fear of evil, from God’s name to his kingdom to his bare will.

We have now pierced the clouds, as it were, and come down from heaven to earth. The transition began with the last line of the first part of the prayer, when we asked that earth might be as heaven. But we now land squarely on the ground: Give us this day our daily bread.

Although this whole line is traditionally counted as one petition, we will break it into two, and this week focus on the simple phrase, “give us this day.” (In English this is first; in Greek and Latin, it is a post-positive, which amounts to the same.)

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We are no longer in the eternity of the heavens, but in “this day.” These words point in two directions. On the one hand, they emphasize that in our world, we cannot see ahead. There is only this day; we meet God here and now, or not at all. All that follows is framed by this narrow focus on the present. In that sense, this world is very different from the eternal, broad view of the heavens.

On the other hand, there is a kind of mirror of eternity in the present moment. Eternity is not a long succession, not a really long time, but an eternal today. Eternity is living in the now. In another way, then, to focus on the now is to take a very eternal, divine perspective. God is always now.

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The key shift between the two parts of the prayer is from an emphasis on God (your name, your kingdom, your will) to an emphasis on us (our daily bread, our trespasses, as we forgive, us not into temptation, deliver us).

But again, this opening line sets the standard for what will come after. Grammatically, we are on the receiving end. We don’t first proclaim what we will do, but beg God to do “for us”: give us! Thomas Aquinas says Christian moral theology is not so much about what we do as what God does for us. The Christian perspective always sees God as a provident Father.

Indeed, this is the first step in applying what we have learned “above the clouds,” in the thy’s of the Our Father, to the world “below the clouds,” this day, where we live. To call God Father is to see ourselves in a position of receptivity. The Father provides bread for his children. Even deeper, the Father provides the very existence of his children, and their nature. We are, and we are what we are, because God makes us. This is the perspective of calling God Father. This is the first thing to know about on earth as it is in heaven.

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To look ahead: our daily bread treats God as our provider, the one who sustains us every step of the way. And it narrows our view to the this day: not God’s provision once, and then we will handle very well ourselves, thank you, but God’s continuing sustenance every day.

Forgive us then quickly shifts the subject, from what we ask for (very minimal: nothing but bread) to our recognition that we have no right to ask – and that God the Father nevertheless always provides, always receives us back.

As we forgive is the only thing we ourselves do – but it is a not-doing. All we pledge to do is not hold grudges. (Though, we will see, this is no small thing.) To realize that it is the Father, who forgives us and daily provides for us, who ultimately matters. If I receive everything, on the one hand, I have no right to hold back, to be unforgiving. On the other hand, I have no need to be stingy, because he always provides, always gives, every day.

Lead us not into temptation is the strangest line of all: as if God might lead us into temptation! But it underlines our absolute reliance on God, a sense that we are always following, and if we are to be safe, it is only because he keeps us safe.

And deliver us from evil sees all victory over harm as being in God’s hand.

In short, all of the Christian life, everything we have to say about this day, “below the clouds,” is that God gives to us, this day.

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How do you cultivate a sense of receiving everything from God?

Part 6 in our series on the Our Father.

Our walk through the “Our Father,” Jesus’s little treatise on the spiritual life, brings us this week to “Thy Will Be Done.” As we noted last week, this line takes another step downward, from the contemplative heights into the practical life. From the heights, in which we see the Father’s “kingdom” extending through heaven and earth, we come to the simple acceptance of God’s “will.”

“Will,” as we said last week, is an interesting middle ground. On the one hand, we believe as Christians that God’s will is not arbitrary, that he has a perfect, wise plan, a reason for everything. (And, if we hold to the philosophy of the Catholic tradition, we believe that no one ever makes purely meaningless acts of will: will always express some kind of intelligence.)

But we speak of will, not intellect or wisdom or plan, precisely to emphasize that the reason doesn’t matter. To say “thy will be done” is precisely not to say, “if it makes good sense to me.” To the contrary, it is to say, “I don’t know the why behind this choice; I don’t see the wisdom in your willing; but I accept.” Even if we believe God has a reason, we say “thy will” to say that his reasons are often inaccessible to us.

The paradigmatic case, of course, is when Jesus himself says, “thy will be done”: “Father, if you will it, remove this cup from me, nevertheless not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22:42). Indeed, in this first sorrowful mystery, Jesus takes us in a sense to the inner depths of suffering: not only does it hurt, but we don’t see the reason for it. All we can do is bear it – “suffer” it, in the older sense of the word – and try to believe that somewhere underneath there is a reason.

We mustn’t think God is arbitrary or mean. But anytime we think we know all his ways, we fall into foolishness, and we wander from his will. When we substitute our intelligence for his, we abandon his perfect plan.

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This is an important part of the Our Father. A couple weeks ago, when I wrote on the opening words of the prayer, my friend Chris commented that we hardly need the rest: everything is right there, in the two words “Our Father.” In one sense this is true. Truly all of Christianity is contained in those words.

But to fully appreciate those words, and their force in our lives, especially in this valley of tears, we have to appreciate that much of the time we won’t see it. Often God will seem more like a will to which we must submit than like a loving Father. We need to say the first words, to know that ultimately behind this strangeness, there is meaning, and love. But we also need these later words, to remember that truly accepting the Father requires accepting his will, even when it makes no sense to me.

Indeed, it is not because he is a cruel tyrant, but precisely because he is a loving Father – infinitely wiser and more merciful than we can imagine – that we have to accept that we often can’t comprehend his ways. It would make sense if he were more like us. Thank God that he isn’t.

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Perhaps this gives us an opening to think of “thy will be done” in a different way. Often we say these words to mean something outside of us: the suffering that comes, the downfalls in our careers or relationships. Thy will be done, Father. I accept this from your gracious and mysterious hand.

But “thy will be done” can also be a motto for our own participation in that plan. Because the Father’s will is always mercy and love. “Thy will be done” can also be an opportunity to say, “may I will as you will” – not only that I accept this thing that befalls me, but that I love, and pour myself out, as the God of Jesus Christ does.

“I will to will the will of God,” a motto of the saints, can also mean, I want to will goodness, and mercy, and kindness, and compassion, and love – and truth and justice and righteousness!

In this way, too, we see the progress and unity of the Lord’s Prayer. It is very fine to call God Father, to have our treasure in heaven, to long for God’s kingdom – but none of this means anything until we come down to the practicals of loving as God loves, willing as he wills.

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How have you grappled with the goodness and mercy of God’s mysterious will in your life?