Today, in the Gospel passage from St.
Luke, the disciples see Jesus praying to his Father and ask him, “Lord,
teach us to pray...” Jesus then teaches them the Our Father, which is indeed a prayer,
but which is really a way of life in the form of a prayer. The Lord's Prayer is
meant to be lived, not just prayed. Although we read Luke's version of the Our
Father today, I would like now to look at Matthew's longer version from the
Sermon on the Mount—the version we all know and love. The opening
words—Our Father who art in heaven—are the words of a people who are in an
intimate relationship with the transcendent heavenly Father, the maker of
all. In saying “Our Father” we proclaim to the world that all people are
our brothers and sisters. When we say, “Hallowed be thy name” we commit
ourselves, in reverential fear of the Lord, that is, reverential love of the
Lord to the worship of the Holy Name of God (God's own Self) and the
sanctification of our own lives which springs from true worship of the Holy
One. In praying “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven” we abandon ourselves to fulfill always as best we can the holy will of
God in our particular lives and in God's world in the context of both the
personal in-breaking of the Kingdom which we call sanctifying and actual grace
and the foreshadowing of this Kingdom which is already come in the Church, of
which we are members, founded by Jesus Christ to proclaim that the Kingdom of
God is at hand. We proclaim and glorify this Kingdom in the best way by living
our lives in conformity with and in transformity by the Gospel personified in
the Holy Spirit poured out into our hearts, the living Gospel that is the Gift
of the Paraclete.
At this point in the prayer, most
people pray for their daily sustenance from food and drink with the words,
“Give us this day our daily bread.” And that is commendable. Yet, in the same
chapter of Matthew that contains the Lord's prayer, Jesus, speaking to his
Jewish audience, tells them and us not to be anxious about such things. He
says, “Do not say, 'What are we to eat? What are we to drink?' The pagans seek
after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things
will be added to you.” The Lord's prayer is about God's eschatological will,
his Rule, his Kingdom breaking in upon us, not about having a sandwich for
lunch. The words “daily bread” panem quotidianum come to us
from an old Latin translation of the Bible that preceded St. Jerome's. Those
translators, before St. Jerome did his work, had to struggle with how to
interpret the Greek words arton epiousion -arton meaning
bread, but what did epiousion mean? The great exegete and
Greek philologist of the 3rd century, Origen of Alexandria, says that the
word epiousion was the invention of the evangelists Matthew
and Luke from two Greek words epi meaning super or above
and ousion meaning substance and used it to translate the now
unknown Aramaic original. St. Jerome translated the Greek word in Matthew's
gospel as “supersubstantial.” Panem nostrum supersubstantialum da nobis
hodie. Give us this day our supersubstantial Bread. That is exactly
how the Douay-Rheims Bible reads—the Bible we all read up to about 1970. Origen
says that this word epiousion never appeared in any written or
spoken tradition of Greek until the evangelists used it to describe
the Bread of Life that is the Word of God and the Living Bread
which is the Eucharist. From then on it was only seen used in commentaries on
the Gospels. Because St. Jerome's translation came too late on the
scene to be the prayer used in the mass, we ended up praying for
daily bread instead of for the Word and Sacrament, the Bread of
Life, the supersubstantial Bread.
The New American Bible remarks in a
footnote that arguments such as Origen's are much more in harmony
with the eschatological nature of the Our Father. Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer,
S.J. believes that the problematic Greek adjective epiousion is
best explained by Origen of Alexandria, but he feels that Origen then goes too
far in his allegorical interpretation. So, with these words of the prayer, we
ask the Father to give us what really will nourish us to live out our journey
on the Christian Way.
In this Mass right now as we break the
Bread of Life that is the Word of God and break the Living Bread that is the
Eucharist together, we are living out this prayer to the fullest, “give us this
day our supersubstantial bread.” The bottom line of today's two parables is not
that the Father gives us a loaf of bread, or an egg or a fish, but rather that
he gives us his Holy Spirit. In the celebration of the Eucharist, the Church
comes closest to the realization of the coming of the Kingdom in this foretaste
of the Banquet in the Kingdom of Heaven where all of us join together as one in
the highest form of praise of God, Christ's own sacrifice of Himself and are
sanctified in the Spirit in so doing.
Having come to this height of spirituality in the prayer, we now have to face up to our struggles to maintain this level of living in the Spirit. We know that we fall into quarrels and backbiting and the whole gamut of human misbehaviors. We ask the Lord to forgive us our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us. Yet, we struggle with temptations against our identity as members of Christ's body, the Church and so pray, “lead us not into temptation.” The prayer at Mass over the supersubstantial drink in the Chalice speaks of the “chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.” We are not only to repeat the ritual described but also the FORGIVING as we have been forgiven. The satanic Power of Evil is out to destroy us who follow Christ whom Satan could not destroy. Our Father in heaven has given us the realization that we cannot persevere with our own strength, but that we can with the strength that comes from God in his sacraments, especially the supersubstantial Bread and Precious Blood that is the Eucharist. Thus, we ask the Lord to “deliver us from Evil.” This and all we have prayed in the Pater Noster, the Our Father we firmly believe will come to pass, and therefore we say together the Hebrew word meaning certainty, truthfulness and faithfulness—we say “Amen!”
Photographs of Brother Mikah's garden by Brother Guerric. This morning's homily by Father Luke.
