Robert Barron - Lord, Teach Us to Pray
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Peace be with you. Friends, we come to this 17 Sunday, of the ordinary time, and we have a great privilege, because we’re reading in our gospel Luke’s account of Jesus' great prayer. The disciples say, «Lord, teach us how to pray,» and so Jesus himself tells them how to pray. So, it’s a very sacred moment, and I think we should move into that space where we’re not just asking a guru or asking someone that we admire. They’re asking the Son of God, «How do I pray»? And we become so familiar with the Our Father that I think we forget the spiritual power of it, so what I want to do is just kind of walk through. Each of the evangelists has a somewhat different take, and Luke’s got a few distinctive features, but here’s how it begins.
Jesus says, «When you pray, say, 'Father, hallowed be your name.'» So first of all, and again, I know we pray this prayer all the time, and so it just kind of runs through our mind, but pause at that opening word, Father. God is power, yes. God is the first cause of all things, yes. God is the sovereign master of the universe, yes. All that’s true, but Jesus says, «Now, when you pray, when you invoke God, you don’t begin with those titles. You begin with this very intimate title, Father».
Think of that relationship with your Father, the intimacy that’s implied, the tenderness of it. That’s how we approach the Creator of the entire cosmos. When you pray the Our Father next time, let that sink in. Pause at that opening word, Father, Father. But now, I’m going to press a little bit, even beyond this point, because precisely as Christians, another dimension opens up here. Jesus is, in the unique sense, the Son of the Father. From all eternity, he’s the Son within the life of the Trinity. What’s he doing now? He’s inviting us, listen now, as the Son of God, the one who really alone is justified in referring to the Father, but he’s inviting us he’s inviting us to share in that relationship that he has with his Father.
So, we’re not simply signaling, as important as that is, our sort of tender, childlike relationship to God. Something even more, we’re praying in union with the Son. We become sons and daughters in the Son. When we pray, we’re not outside of God so much petitioning. We’re invited by Jesus inside, inside the very life of the Trinity. Think about that everybody, next time you say, «Our Father». It’s our in the sense of all of us, but even more powerfully, I’m saying it with Jesus. He’s the Son, yes, in that unique sense, but we’re sons and daughters in the Son, and in that relationship we pray. And then what’s the first thing we ask? «Hallowed be your name».
I know it sounds peculiar to the modern English ear. I mean, what it means is, may your name be held holy. And you say, «Well, okay, isn’t God’s name always holy»? Well, yeah, it is in itself. The prayer is, see, may we hold this name holy. Now, what does holy mean in the Bible, kadosh in the Hebrew? It has the sense of other, of set apart, as distinctive. That’s what holy means. So Father, may we hold your name as set apart. Now, what does that mean? It means God is, without competition, the highest good.
So, there’s all the goods in the world that we seek. I talk about it all the time, pleasure and fame and power and honor and all of this. Good things, and we seek them. But above them all, in an absolutely unique and qualitatively different sense, is the goodness of God. Deuteronomy chapter six, the Shema prayer, «Hear, O Israel. The Lord your God is God alone». No competition. Remember in the accounts of the Ten Commandments, «I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God». It doesn’t mean God’s having emotional problems. It means he’s distinctive, kadosh, set apart, holy, hallowed. It’s a very powerful scene. It’s the opening move of the prayer is, if we get this wrong, see, everything else will be wrong. If God is one good among many, or God’s like he’s number four on my list of priorities, ah, the whole spiritual life’s off-kilter. «Hallowed be your name».
You’re the highest good. You are the summum bonum. It’s a very important move in the spiritual order. Then we pray what? «Your kingdom come, and your will be done on Earth as in heaven». I’ve said before too, I think, that in many ways this is the whole of the Christian spiritual life, so to get this right, and that’s why Jesus places it right at the heart of the prayer. So, «Your kingdom come,» Jesus' preaching is ordered to this idea, isn’t it? That’s what’s on his lips when he begins preaching in the Hills of Galilee is, the kingdom of God is at hand. Every move he makes is meant to embody and express the kingdom. What’s the kingdom? It’s God’s way of ordering things. God’s way of ordering things, God’s law.
Now, that obtains always in heaven, so that’s the eternal law that’s identical to the divine mind. It’s the way the realm of the saints and angels is ordered, according to love and to justice and to peace. What are we praying? May that ordering that obtains always in heaven become the ordering of the Earth. May your kingdom come, your will be done here as it is there. We’re praying for a correspondence. Now, Catholics, listen, every single time we come together for the mass, we are begging for, and indeed embodying, this correspondence.
When we say for example, at the Holy, Holy, «May our voices blend with theirs,» we’re talking about the song of the angels, right? That means the ordering of things in heaven. May our voices here harmonize with their voices in heaven. We’re asking for a union of heaven and Earth. By the way, what are the angels singing? Well, go to the prophet Isaiah, «Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh,» «Holy, holy, holy». Now see, bring these first parts of the Our Father together. «Hallowed be your name,» that’s the ordering of heaven, you see? That’s what it’s like to be in the kingdom of heaven. We’re praying that that order would become the order of the Earth.
Boy, as I say, the whole of the Christian life, moral life, spiritual life, the life of prayer and liturgy, all of it is contained in that great petition. And then this I love, because it’s so mysterious, «Give us each day our daily bread». The Greek behind this is very intriguing because it’s unique, really, to the gospels. The Greek here is ton arton ton epiousion. Artos means bread in Greek, right? Well, what is epiousion? Well, epi, E-P-I, is like an intensifier. It means on. I’m a bishop, for example, and the word episkopos, episkopos, well, skope means to look and episkope means to look out on, right, so I’m an overseer of the life of the church. That’s what episkopos means.
Well, here we have epiousion. Well, ousia means substance. We say, for example, that Jesus is one substance with the Father, so epiousios means super substantial. It means substantial to the highest degree. It’s curious, isn’t it? So we pray, «Give us our super substantial bread». St.Jerome, when he was rendering this Greek text into Latin in the Vulgate, look it up, go online, look it up, he says, «panem supersubstantialem». That’s exactly it, our super substantial bread. Now, a lot of reasons, it’ll take me too far afield, why we say daily, but the Greek is super substantial.
Okay, what bread are we asking for? We’re not just asking for the bread that will feed our bodies. That’s the point. Give us each day this super substantial bread. Well, now, we Catholics know what he’s talking about. We talk about the Eucharistic bread being transubstantiated into the body of Christ. Not ordinary bread, not just a symbol of Christ, who cares, but the super substantial bread. That’s it. That’s it. That’s what we’re asking for in the Our Father, «Give us each day, Lord, not just the bread that will keep us alive physically, but the bread that will keep us alive spiritually».
Think about that please, everybody, next time you pray the Our Father and you come to that line about the daily bread. And then, of course, «Forgive us our sins,» right, «as we forgive those who trespass against us». Jesus came for all kinds of reasons, to teach us and to inspire us and so on, but you could argue the main reason he came was to affect the forgiveness of our sins. Fulton Sheen says this so powerfully in his Life of Christ, that the temptations the devil gave him at the beginning of his public life were in the direction of being a messiah for other purposes, to be a bread messiah, to feed the people, to be a wonder worker messiah, to do wonderful things, and Jesus resists those. I’ve come to die for the forgiveness of sins. That’s why he’s come.
And so this prayer, see, is to order us to this great truth about Jesus. He’s come to forgive our sins, and so we beg to be drawn into the power of that forgiveness. But then the as we forgive, because we’re forgiven sinners, we forgive those who have offended us. Not just that we’re nice guys and nice gals, but because we’ve been so loved and forgiven, that spills over into the forgiveness of those who’ve harmed us. And then this is something unique to Luke, and I’ll close with this. He says, «Do not subject us to the final test».
This is a very basic biblical idea. You see it in many places in the Old Testament, the expectation that just before the coming of the Messiah, there’d be a time of trial. There’d be a time of testing, that something awful would happen and people would be tried, see, before the Messiah comes. And so, Jesus is tapping into this idea that as we’re preparing for the coming of the Messiah, we’re aware of the spiritual struggle. And see, everybody, I think this is so basic in the spiritual life. It’s not just, hey, we’re nice people, nice modern people trying to be good-hearted and be nice to our neighbors. I mean, that’s fine, but the spiritual life, it’s a struggle.
It’s a war, as Paul said, «against powers and principalities». We’re up against powers that we can’t see, and they’re not happy when we come into deeper communion with Christ. Trust me when I tell you this, they’re not happy about it. What are we praying for here at the end of the prayer is for strength and for courage, to face down the spiritual powers that don’t want us in union with Christ. I like the spiritual seriousness with which this prayer ends. Okay, so open your Bibles. Take a look at this section of Luke, and read through this prayer slowly and with great spiritual attention. And next time you pray it at mass, or next time you pray it in your morning prayers or evening prayers, remember these great moves, and God bless you.