The Lord's Prayer: 'And lead us not into temptation'.

'The Temptations of Christ' 12th Century mosaic in St Mark's Basilica, Venice, Italy. 

The life of Jesus shows us that victory in the battle of temptation can become possible only through prayer. The 'Our Father' therefore becomes a tool against sin, which results from our consenting to temptation.

We must not forget then that these are the words Jesus gives us, 'Lead us not into temptation'. By asking the Father not to 'lead' us into temptation we are asking a twofold reality to come about: both 'do not allow us to enter into temptation' and 'do not let us yield to temptation'. The letter of James reminds us that 'God cannot be tempted and he himself tempts no one' (1:13). God wills for us to be free from evil. It is our own desire that allows temptation to surface, therefore we ask him not to allow us to take the way that leads to sin.

But are we supported when we ask him to lead us away from being tempted?

Yes. This petition we ask, has a beautiful thread woven in that is subtle, yet strong. We, in the words Jesus gives,  implore the Holy Spirit for discernment and strength.

The Holy Spirit enables us to discern when adversity and trials arise, which in of themselves are in fact necessary for the growth of our inner being. In this discernment we are able to see the differences between 'being tempted' and 'consenting to temptation'. We only desire what appears to be good, the Holy Spirit's gift of discernment allows us to have a reality check. Is what we perceive to be a 'delight to the eye and desirable', actually the opposite, and in reality its fruit is sin, which leads to death. This power of discernment given is not a gloomy reality, it is a way in which the believer is both empowered and transformed joyfully as they journey through life.

Manuscript depicting Origen of Alexandria. 

Origen writes: 

God does not want to impose the good, but wants free beings... There is a certain usefulness to temptation. No one but God knows what our soul has received from him, not even we ourselves. But temptation reveals it in order to teach us to know ourselves, and in this way we discover our evil inclinations and are obliged to give thanks for the goods that temptation has revealed to us'

(De Orationis 29).


The plea therefore, 'Lead us not into temptation' from this most powerful of prayers, implies that we need to make a decision of the heart with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. One of my favourite lines from scripture, which is sung in my weekly prayer, sums up this reality so accurately, 'For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also'. Mt 6:21.

But if the feeling of temptation is too much for me, why does a loving God the Father enable me to feel weighed down with temptation? Again we must remind ourselves what Scripture says... 'No testing has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, so that you may be able to endure it' (1 Cor 10:13).

The Temptation of Thomas Aquinas.

'We do not pray to change the divine decree, but only to obtain what God has decided will be obtained through prayer'. St Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologiae. 

It is by his prayer that Jesus vanquishes the tempter, both at the outset of his public mission (see mosaic at the top of this post) and in the completing action and struggle of his agony on the cross. In this divine instructive prayer of the 'Our Father' then, Christ unites us with his battle and his agony. He encourages us to be in vigilant communion with his heart. Also, we cannot ignore the collective pro noun here, the word.. 'us' lead... 'us'.  Jesus is teaching us to pray this not only for ourselves, but that of the whole Church. United in his words to the Father, 'keep them in your name'. We are never alone in the battle of prayer over temptation, feel supported when next saying this line in the 'Our Father', that all those saying it are saying it for you and themselves, just as Jesus did, and as we will, in our last temptation of our earthly battle. When praying this line therefore we are ultimately asking for our final perseverance.    

'Lo, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is he who is awake' (Rev 16:15).

Our Father, 'As we forgive those who trespass against us'

It almost comes as an afterthought during prayer. And yet it is not. "Forgiveness is the most underrated virtue", a father tells his daughter in a moving scene in the thoughtful movie Calvary. But forgiving is going to save her life. It is immediately clear that this father is not talking about God's forgiveness, but of our own. Why is forgiving someone who has done me wrong so difficult?

At the end of the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-32), we find that there is not only a forgiving father, but also a son, a brother, who needs to forgive. And we can feel for this loyal son. He stayed on, while the other went. He did the work, and the other partied. And slowly his heart must have grown cold towards his brother. And then suddenly his brother returns. And all is forgiven. Really? His father may have lost his marbles, but he certainly has not. And so he refuses to join the celebrations. After a little while, the father comes out to the elder son, encouraging him to forgive and rejoice at the return of his brother. And we are left with a cliffhanger. Will he, or will he not?

When we are hurt, we are tempted to hold on to what we know (the pain) and what we can control (our anger). But we have to let go. It will not be easy. And it will not happen at once. Even the early disciples were struggling with this idea. An obviously exasperated apostle Peter asked Jesus "Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times?" It sounds reasonable, he is your brother, so you don't throw him out immediately. But surely, after seven times, the message should be clear, right? Wrong! Jesus answered, "not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times" (Matt. 18:21-22). Jesus' answer is not about doing the sums, but points to something else: the importance of forgiving itself. Not only for this brother who has done Peter wrong, but also for Peter himself. Why?

For one thing, not forgiving not only means that I block my relation with the other, but also block my self. I will not be free if I cannot let go of feelings of hatred and hurt. It is like a ship that can not leave the harbour because an anchor has not been raised. Feelings of hatred and hurt prevent me from leaving the harbour of self-chosen pity. If I want to sail to the wind of God's love, I have to cut this faulty anchor. I have to forgive unconditionally. So that I can be free to do what He asks of us: to serve Him without fear in charity and love (Luke 1: 74-75).

All Saints - Exsultate Justi!

In England and Wales, the feast of All Saints is being celebrated today (and All Souls tomorrow). With the music of our prayers let us lift our hearts to God, as we praise him with all the saints in heaven.

The following piece, Exsultate justi, is a setting by Ludovico da Viadana (1564-1645) of Psalm 32:1-2:

Exsultate justi in Domino: rectos decet collaudatio. 

Confitemini Domino in cithara. In psalterio decem chordarum psallite illi. 

 Cantate ei canticum novum: bene psallite ei in vociferacione.

Let the just rejoice in the Lord: it is fitting for the upright to praise him.

Sing to him to the psaltery and the ten-stringed lute.

Make him a new song: sing to him well with strong voice.

Sung by the Cantoria Sine Nomine di Castelnuovo (Italy), directed by Carlo Andriollo

Our Father: ‘Forgive us our trespasses’

God creating man, by Michelangelo 

There was once a garden into which man was loved into existence, sharing the image and likeness of his Creator. Born of dust and having the creative breath of God breathed into him, he stood as a unique creature in the artwork of creation. A gulf existed between God and man, the sort of gulf that naturally exists between a creator and his creation; but the two were united by a harmonious bond of love. 

Adam and Eve exiled from Paradise

But man thought it good to overcome this gulf by making himself God, seizing that which was not his by right, thereby disrupting that harmonious relationship which God had willed for His beloved creature. Ever since that maxima culpa by the first parents of humanity, the words ‘forgive us our trespasses’ have ever been on the lips of mankind, shown to us in varied ways through the Scriptures.

So what of these words, ‘forgive us our trespasses’? In the first place, we are reminded that, because of the fault of our first parents, our human will is inclined towards sin—something we call ‘concupiscence’— and we tend to commit sin. Of course, this is not how God created our human nature, but such as it has been since the Fall.

Secondly, in light of our sinfulness, we ought to turn to God for forgiveness, for ultimately all sin is an act of disobedience towards Him, but the remedy for this disobedience is also to be found from Him. This act of turning to the Lord is exactly what our first parents lost sight of in the Garden: they forgot the Lord. Turning to the Lord beseeching His forgiveness and mercy is a recognition in truth of the state of our human condition. We acknowledge our real need for Him. St John Chrysostom says that by our Lord showing us how to pray in this way, we are reminded of our sins, thereby 'persuading us to be modest'. Pride wears many masks and is never far away; modesty will help guard us from it.

In giving us the Our Father, Jesus shows us how to approach the One who loved us into existence, namely, in truthfulness and hope. St John in his epistle says: ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’

It is more difficult for us to experience the harmony which once existed in that Garden before the Fall; but Christ showed us the way back to Paradise. Just as the downfall of humanity began with a forgetting of its need for God and a loss of sight with regard to its proper relationship with Him, so our Blessed Lord reminds us in the Our Father that the beginnings of our redemption will be found, first, in the recognition that we are sinners, and, secondly, that we need the forgiveness which He readily offers to us out of sheer love for you and for me. So great is His love that He gave to the Church the Sacraments to help us grow into that likeness that was originally lost. What great hope there is for us!

The Holy Father hearing a confession during World Youth Day in Brazil

Our Father: Give us this day our daily bread

The eyes of all creatures look to you

and you give them their food in due time (Ps. 145(144):15)

This verse from the Psalms is taken up in the monastic Grace before meals. We ask God to bless our food, trusting that he is the source of all good things who will satisfy our daily needs. We are bodily creatures, not angels. So, in the Lord's Prayer, having asked that our wills and minds be turned to the Lord, we ask him to attend to our bodily needs too: "Give us this day our daily bread".

In Jesus's context, as in much of the world today, bread is the staple food. In the Old Testament, bread is often interchangeable with “life” itself. In Psalm 103(104), we sing God's praises for his providential care of all creatures, giving them food, drink and shelter. Human beings are part of this ecosystem and so God provides “bread to strengthen man’s heart” (v. 15). This Biblical notion of "bread" covers all our daily needs, as St Augustine notes: “we ask for a sufficiency of all things necessary under the one name of bread” (Ep. 130:11).

'Prayer before meals', Manansala

And yet – “man does not live by bread alone”! Jesus thus rebukes the devil in the desert, because a focus on material needs can distract us from the priorities of our spiritual life (Mt 4:4, Lk 4:4, quoting Dt 8:3). After giving us the Lord's Prayer, Jesus goes on to say (Mt 6:25): "do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" Food is there to serve our higher goal of becoming God's children; we should not seek to curry favour with God just to receive material rewards. As St Maximus the Confessor said, we should eat to live, not live to eat! Life means so much more than natural nourishment. “For the kingdom of God does not mean food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17).

But what about all the starving people in the world? Should they be satisfied with purely spiritual goals? Of course not: ordinary bread is not to be neglected! The obligation to "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness", does not mean God wants us to ignore material needs; instead he tells us to seek his kingdom in order that "these things [bread, etc.] shall be yours as well" (Mt 6:32-3). The more we focus our goals on God's righteousness and justice, the better we understand the urgency of the task to create a fairer world. Nearly 1,000 million people go hungry every night, and yet there is more than enough food in the world, but it is unfairly distributed. Inequality builds up when we selfishly build structures to guarantee our future security, not noticing how this damages other people around us – as when people “panic-buy” during a shortage, meaning that those who really need the goods are left without (cf. the parable of the Rich Fool, Lk 12:16-21). God has not abandoned the starving; he is very close to them. But he needs us to act in truth and righteousness so that justice may flourish on earth.

Finally, there is an important double-meaning in the word "daily" in "our daily bread". The Greek term, epiousios, is totally unique in the Bible and Classical Greek literature, so Origen was probably right that the Evangelists coined it (leaving the original Aramaic term a mystery). It can mean "sufficient for the day" (either today or tomorrow), hence "daily" or "needful". But St Jerome was equally justified in translating it supersubstantialis – "more than substantial" – which would later occur even in the English Douai-Rheims translation as "supersubstantial". The Christian tradition, especially in the West, has long seen a connection between the daily need for ordinary bread and the ultimate need to receive the "living bread" that Jesus promised us would be his very own body. That is why the Council of Trent called the Eucharist by this Biblical term, "supersubstantial" (Session 13, Ch. 8). Only Jesus himself is the "living bread which came down from heaven", which a person may eat and live forever (Jn 6:51). The natural substance of our being is transformed by the grace-filled "supersubstance" of the "living bread" – the Body of Christ – which we receive in the Eucharist. That is why all people may call on God for their food, but only Christians may pray for their "daily bread" in precisely the way that Jesus taught us.

Velasco, 'Hapag ng Pag-asa' (Table of Hope)

Our Father: Thy will be done on earth as it is heaven

                                   “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”

So familiar is recitation of the Lord's Prayer to many of us that often, I suspect - if some readers are anything like me - we have not really tuned in, not really got around to focusing on what exactly it is we are petitioning the Lord for with these words, before we are already over half-way through the prayer and thinking about who we might be forgiving for their trespasses against us!

The Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel

These are difficult words. Obviously they are not difficult to say, but they can be very difficult to mean. Throughout the history of the Church it has ever been thus. Think of Peter's confession to Jesus in Mark 8: "You are the Christ", whereupon Jesus foretells of how he must suffer, be rejected and killed, before He will rise again. And what is Peter's reaction to this? Peter has the audacity to rebuke Jesus, before being swiftly rebuked himself by Jesus with those cutting and chastening words, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men."

Peter desired that the Lord's will be conformed to his – to his ideas of what the Messiah should be –and this desire has remained prevalent to this day. To will what God wishes is hard. It is much easier to pray that God would will what we wish. And yet, whilst we go on doing this, we will not become truly Christ-like; in fact, we will grow apart from him. We must aspire to follow the example of Christ at Gethsemane who said: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this chalice from me; yet not what I will, but what you will.” This is Jesus perfectly living out the perfect prayer He taught us.

The Agony in the Garden, El Greco

The first stage in living out this petition has to manifest itself in an earnest to desire to learn what it is that the Father wills. Again, to do this, we are best to follow the Lord’s example; to pray and to be familiar with the scriptures. The Father’s will is not necessarily ours! Thomas Aquinas reminds us, in his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, that the third gift which the Holy Spirit works in us is called the gift of knowledge. He goes on to say that “among all that goes to make up knowledge and wisdom in man, the principal wisdom is that man should not depend solely upon his own opinion.” We can know the truth, but we do not always find it by contemplating our own desires.

This takes humility; as St Thomas goes on to say: ‘Out of humility one does not trust one's own knowledge: "Where humility is there is also wisdom." (Proverbs 11:2) The proud trust only themselves. Now, the Holy Spirit, through the gift of wisdom, teaches us that we do not our own will but the will of God. It is through this gift that we pray of God that His "will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And in this is seen the gift of knowledge.’

Now the second part of fulfilling this petition is perhaps the most difficult. To will God’s will over our own when the two are in conflict is challenging. But paradoxically this is the only way that we will ever be truly free. Whilst we are slaves to our own wills, we will never obtain the freedom that Christ promises, we will never be our true selves; we will never allow grace to perfect our nature.

But conforming our will to His is easier said than done. It is not an easy thing to confront greatness. We can struggle enough when we find it in another person, let alone when we contemplate our finitude in relation to God. If we are not careful this can discourage, even paralyse, for the greatness of the other makes me feel my own littleness, perhaps even deluding ourselves that we don't really matter. Goethe said that there is only one defence against great superiority, and that is love. And perhaps this is true, for it is only love of Christ that can help us partake in the divine life. But Fr Romano Guardini wonders whether this covers the entirety of the matter; for it may not always be possible to love. He suggests that it may be more correct to say that the best defence against great superiority consists in truth and reverence, which say: “He is great, I am not. But it is good that greatness should be, even if it is not in me but in another.” Then there is an open space, and envy disappears.

As I write this, I think of how much pressure there is on the Church to change its teaching and its practice. I cannot help but think that what we are witnessing is largely as a result of the desire that God be more like us. We find something hard or requiring heroic qualities and we wish that God did not will it that way. We delude ourselves that because God’s mercy overflows, that He can no longer judge. We forget that mercy cannot exist without justice. We begin to think that the greatest travesty is that somebody might be put off the practise of the faith because of its difficulty. And thus we seek to argue why God’s will must be for us to remain in whatever state we are in, and that the Church’s teaching should alter to condone us in our sin, not call us out of it, at the same time abandoning the notion of conforming ourselves to Christ.

St Martin de Porres OP feeds the poor, Holy Cross Dominican Priory, Leicester

Archbishop Charles Chaput wisely reminded us recently about what happens when we ignore Jesus’s teaching: “If we ignore the poor, we will go to hell. If we blind ourselves to their suffering, we will go to hell. If we do nothing to ease their burdens; then we will go to hell. Ignoring the needs of the poor among us is the surest way to dig a chasm of heartlessness between ourselves and God, and ourselves and our neighbours.” And he goes on to say that whilst all are welcome in the Church “we can’t pretend that they’re welcome on their own terms. None of us are welcome on our own terms in the Church; we’re welcome on Jesus’ terms. That’s what it means to be a Christian—you submit yourself to Jesus and his teaching, you don’t recreate your own body of spirituality.” Only if we truly heed these words can we pray with integrity: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Our Father: Thy Kingdom come

In this part of the Our Father we echo that well known invocation Marana tha - Come, Lord Jesus. This is because when we pray for the coming of the Kingdom, we also pray for the coming of its Sovereign, Jesus. 

Fra' Angelico, Christ's Glorified in the Court of Heaven

In another sense, according to St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine, the “kingdom” is eternal life. We look forward to obtaining and sharing in eternal happiness in heaven. As Our Lord later says in the Gospel of Matthew, “Come, O blessed of my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” [Mt 25:24]. In saying the words, “thy kingdom come”, therefore, we are making a statement of faith of the world to come.

Further, St. Thomas Aquinas notes, we can think of these words as asking for the Lord to reign over us: “for when we serve justice, then God reigns, but when we serve sin, the devil does: let no sin reign in your body, (Rom 6:12); they have not rejected you but me, from reigning over them (1 Sam 8:7).” So, on this understanding, we are asking the Lord to make us his agents, to reign in our heart in order that we act with charity and in accordance with the God’s law;  in order that we may do justice rather than evil.

Of course, these three ways of reading the words are closely connected. If we synthesise what we have said already, we could say that we invoke God’s blessings for the present, serve justice through the practice of charity and avoidance of evil, and that we do all of this in the hope of gaining a place in heaven.

As far as summaries of the Christian life go, that’s not bad in three words! Then again, one shouldn’t be surprised - they are Jesus’s words after all! 

Our Father: Hallowed be thy name

A Dominican friend from Panama suggested to me that the English translation of the Our Father is the worst of all of the modern languages. I have always disagreed with him, until pondering the use of ‘hallowed be thy name’ in the Lord’s prayer. How often do we ever hear the word ‘hallowed’ used in any other context than the Our Father? Hallowed is a strange word sounding a bit like like ‘halloween’ but not really having much other use than here in the Our Father. I would translate the Latin text ‘sanctificetur nomen tuum’ into English as ‘sacred is your name’ or perhaps ‘your name is most holy and sacred’. When we pray to God, perhaps no language can express the magnitude of sacredness and holiness of God.

In a letter to Proba by St Augustine, he ponders the purpose of praying. If the Lord knows what we need before we ask for it, then what is the point of approaching God who is all-knowing (omniscient) and omnipotent? If God knows what we want, what we need and can provide then do we really need to ask in the first place? This uber-sacredness of God, His hallowed name, is highlighted by St Augustine, who teaches that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (as he cannot fail to know this), but instead wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is why we are told, Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke with unbelievers. The deeper our faith, stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the greater our capacity will be to receive that gift.

Just as sacredness or ‘hallowed-ness’ is difficult to imagine or perceive, it requires effort to remember just who and what God is. God is the highest of all that is sacred and holy, and the way for us to obtain a life of happiness in eternity. St Augustine reminds us that we are limited, but we can grow in our capacity to receive the gift of a life of happiness, through prayer. Yes, our understanding of the sacred is limited, but what we can do is try our best to have the sacred be exactly that. Sacred liturgy, music and artwork in our churches help direct us to the Almighty. The hallowed nature of Catholic churches needs to be maintained and promoted as being something that is not disposable, everyday or open to unthinking reform. This is partly why I despise some of the tacky and banal Church architecture of the mid to late 20th century. Such buildings do not represent hallowed ground or the sacred, they just look like some concrete community centre. Catholicism means turning our lives to God rather than selling out to worldly pursuits. We are taught to build up virtues that will serve us for life, rather than believing money will give us permanent happiness. To paraphrase Frank Underwood in the US series House of Cards, “Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after ten years.” Hallowed is the old stone building that stands for centuries.

Our Father: Who Art in Heaven

How close is Our Father to us? It is a common experience in prayer, and in the spiritual life generally, to feel a great distance between God and us. This 'hole' in our spiritual life can be perplexing and painful, and sometimes it can lead us towards a despair, a fear that our God is not a God who loves us.

We cannot avoid this despair by denying that there is, in a sense, a distance between God and us. Indeed recognition of this reality is present in the prayer Our Lord taught us. Jesus reminds us that our Father is in Heaven whereas we are here on earth, a place where God's will is often rejected by those upon it.

How then can we make sense of this distance between God and us? Firstly we can continue to pray the Our Father! As we move through the prayer we remember that it is fitting that we should find the distance between God and us perplexing: we are not made for this world - we look forward to the kingdom. However, we can also look to the one who taught us the prayer.

As St. John wrote in his gospel 'God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not die but have everlasting life.' It is God who bridges the gap between Heaven and earth, he is the one who came down from heaven to raise us up.

Thus, when we feel our painful separation from God we can meditate confidently over these words:

Our Father who art in Heaven, who came down to us to bring us back to you.

"Our Father"

It is an act of audacity to call God ‘Our Father’. Although God as creator is in a sense ‘Father’ of the whole world that proceeds forth from his creative word, we can claim no natural right to address Him in the intimate and familial way in which the fatherhood of the Pater Noster speaks. It rolls off the tongue as perhaps the first prayer we memorise as children, but we only dare to make it our own because we have first been authorised and commanded to do so by Jesus Christ, who is the personal revelation of the Father in our world. To address God with such filial boldness is an act of fidelity to Christ, who instructed the disciples to pray in this way in response to their recognition of dependence and insufficiency. The Lord whom they seek is already the one who causes their seeking, and it is in response to their petition (itself already a prayer)—“Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk 11:1)—that Jesus teaches them the Our Father as an invitation into his own prayer life, a route into that communion which alone fulfils their deepest desires, the Son’s own relationship to God the Father.

The ‘Fatherhood’ which the Our Father speaks of is, therefore, not a generic image of Fatherhood, but the specific Trinitarian relationship of the Father and the Son, into which we are granted participation by the Holy Spirit. For this reason, Aquinas speaks of the words ‘Our Father’ as a nutshell summary of the entire Christian faith, words which cannot be uttered authentically without faith in the Triune God and the incarnation of the Son. Yet if they are a summary of the authentic doctrine of the faith, they are also a summary of the essential attitude and emotional disposition of Christian prayer (which Aquinas sees as the “interpreter of desire”): by addressing God as Father, we place ourselves in joyful obedience, humbly recognising the wonder of our own being and resting in the simple assurance of being loved into existence and loved into new life in Christ.

To pray Our Father, then, is part of our baptismal vocation. It is something given to us in that moment when we receive faith and are re-born anew by engrafting into Christ. It is not only because the Son alone can address the Father as ‘my Father’ that it is given to us to pray in the plural to Our Father, but also because our re-birth into the Son’s relationship to the Father is also the moment of our entry into the Church as the community of faith. For Christians, to be most fully a person is almost the opposite of being an ‘individual’. Baptism radically de-individualises us by drawing us into the communion of the Church, and the Christian always prays as a member of the Church, even when they do so in private. To pray Our Father is a reminder that we cannot ‘go it alone’, that wherever we go our connection to Christ and his Church abides, for we have been made an irreplaceable part of something bigger than ourselves upon which we depend for our own innermost identity. It is, therefore, most fitting that we pray Our Father at each celebration of Holy Mass, as the people of God are gathered—with the angels and saints—around the Eucharistic Lord, in anticipation of the Kingdom to come.

Our Father: a new commentary on the Lord's Prayer

It is not always easy to find the right words to pray. This was the problem facing Jesus's own disciples, when they said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples' (Lk 11:1). St Paul also recognised the difficulty, saying that 'we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words' (Rom 8:26).

Jesus teaches his disciples to pray
in the Sermon on the Mount

It is a great blessing and a grace, then, that God has provided good words to use. Like a parent teaching a child to speak, to enlarge its vocabulary and say new things, God gives us new ways of sharing with him the deepest longings of our heart. The Scriptures are a useful place to find prayers and hymns which we can make our own, not least the Psalms, which form the backbone of the Church's public prayer in the Divine Office.

But the best prayer of all, because it comes straight from Jesus Christ in response to his disciples' request, is undoubtedly the Lord's Prayer, better known as the Our Father (cf. Mt 6:9-13; Lk 11:1-4. This is a prayer for all times and seasons, for all situations, and for all people. Above all, it draws us into the prayer of Christ himself, because we address (as he did) our prayers to our loving Father in heaven.

In this new series on Godzdogz, we hope to explore the rich spiritual and theological meanings of the Lord's Prayer. This is a prayer dear to countless generations of Christians before us, and it should be frequently on our lips. In commenting on the meaning of each phrase, our aim is to achieve a deeper understanding which will in turn deepen our prayer, through the Son, in the Spirit, to the Father.

Our Father, 
who art in heaven, 
hallowed be thy Name; 
thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread, 
and forgive us our trespasses, 
as we forgive those who trespass against us; 
and lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from evil. 

For the kingdom,
the power and the glory are yours
now and for ever.

Amen.

The Rosary: Introduction

Do you ever struggle to find the right words to pray to God? We very often "do not know how to pray as we ought" (Rom 8:26) and then we need to turn to God and say, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Lk 11:1).  In response, Jesus offers us his own words, the Lord's Prayer, to address our Father in heaven with confidence. The Church, too, has given Christians many powerful prayers to give voice to our deepest longings, to praise and thank God, and to ask him to meet our daily needs. We can make these 'formal' prayers our own by using them frequently as we lift our hearts to God. Through the habit of prayer, we become caught up in the divine dialogue of love.

The Rosary is part of the Dominican habit

The Rosary is like that: it is composed of formal prayers but in it we draw closer to Mary, the blessed Mother of God, and through her we are invited into the infinite love of Jesus. The ancient motto, Ad Jesum per Mariam – To Jesus through Mary – encapsulates this movement. We honour Mary and try to imitate her because she was the pre-eminent Christian disciple. Thus we hope to become more Christ-like.

Mary points us to Jesus

So Godzdogz is embarking on a new series on the Rosary, in which we will explore all the 'Mysteries of the Rosary' – those events in the lives of Mary and Jesus which reveal God's great plan of salvation for us. When we pray the Rosary, we use the words of the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be, but in our hearts we ponder a particular 'mystery', such as the birth of Jesus, his carrying of the Cross, or his Resurrection. All the mysteries are Christocentric, even where Mary seems to be the subject (such as her Coronation as Queen of Heaven), because Mary is always pointing us towards her Son. With Mary, we contemplate and adore Jesus.

Priory Church of Our Lady of the Rosary and St Dominic, Haverstock Hill, London, with 14 Rosary chapels (the last Glorious Mystery is depicted in the stained glass of the East window)

The Rosary is a prayer for all seasons: the mysteries take us through the whole range of human experiences in the light of Christ, from joy to sorrow, death to risen life. Indeed, the Rosary is many things at once: it uses simple prayers but invites profound meditation; it involves mental words and tactile beads (in fact, 'bead' comes from bede, the old English word for 'prayer'); it is very old yet always fresh; Biblical in both explicit and implicit ways; to be said alone or together in the family or religious community; a prayer for the church, the home, or the road.

Filipina nuns pray the Rosary during the EDSA demonstrations that peacefully toppled the Marcos dictatorship

The Rosary is also a specially Dominican prayer. It is 'our sacred heritage' and 'a characteristic mark of the Order', and we wear the Rosary on our habit. The modern Rosary was shaped and popularised by Dominicans, such as Blessed Alain de la Roche, Jakob Sprenger and later Pope St Pius V, but earlier forms were important to St Dominic himself and the first brethren. Indeed, you can often see depictions of Our Lady granting the Rosary to St Dominic.

Our Lady giving the Rosary to St Dominic

This series will feature a reflection on each of the 20 mysteries as well as an introduction to each set of mysteries: Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, and Luminous.

For some information about how to pray the Rosary, see https://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/prayers/rosary/how_to.htm. 

But note that the Dominican style is simpler in its core constituents. It begins:

O God, come to our aid.

O Lord, make haste to help us.

Glory be ... Amen. Alleluia. 

The first mystery is then announced (no Apostles' Creed), followed by the Our Father, 10 Hail Mary's and the Glory Be. The pattern is repeated to complete the set of 5 mysteries. There is an option to say all 15 or 20 mysteries, but this is not necessary! Then the Rosary finishes with the Salve Regina (Hail, Holy Queen).

Traditionally, roses are distributed after Mass on 7 October, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary

Popular Piety: the Dead

Why do we pray for the dead or “Holy Souls”, as they are sometimes called?  In brief terms, we pray for the dead because we believe in the immortality of the soul; we believe that nobody can be received into heaven without having first been purified of the consequences of their sins in purgatory; and, we believe that God hears the prayers of his children whether those prayers are offered for themselves or for others.  So, we pray for the Holy Souls in purgatory with confidence that God hears us.  And the reason that we do this is simply because we love them, and wish them to be in heaven.

We can trace the genealogy of this prayer back to scripture.  In the Old Testament we read in the second book of Maccabees how Judas Maccabee, the Jewish leader, prayed for the sins of his fallen soldiers: “For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead.  But if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.  Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.” (2 Macc 12:44-45)  Moreover, the Christian Church has from its foundation “honoured the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God”. (CCC 1032)

Praying is one of a number of things Christians do for the dead.  Besides prayer, we can give alms in their honour, obtain indulgences and undertake works of penance.  Once a very central theme of Christian worship, these practices were suppressed at the Reformation.  As Prof. Eamon Duffy remarks in his recent book “Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations” the effect of rejecting purgatory, the cult of the Saints, and prayers to and for the dead, at the Reformation, was to “[reduce] Christianity to the mere company of the living.” (p.33)

The Dominicans have a particular devotion to the Holy Souls.  Along with the rest of the Church, the souls of the faithful departed are remembered each day at Holy Mass.  Additionally, the Constitutions of the Order devote a whole article to Suffrages for the Dead (LCO Ch.2, Art.III).  From particular Mass intentions (e.g. for deceased parents of the Friars on 7th February) to praying daily the De Profundis, the Order places great emphasis on praying for the dead, especially its own Brothers and Sisters, as well as friends, familiars and benefactors.

In the month of November the Church remembers the Holy Souls in purgatory.  It is a worthwhile opportunity for each of us to renew our commitment to pray for the dead so that we may hope, as that saintly Pastor, Archbishop Fulton Sheen is reported to have said, “As we enter heaven we will see them, so many of them coming towards us and thanking us. We will ask who they are, and they will say, a poor soul you prayed for in purgatory.”

Popular Piety: Blessings

'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 1: 3).

A blessing is a divine and life-giving action which has the Father as its source. This means that in the fullest sense of the word the whole of creation is a blessing. This creation, as we know, was damaged by sin but later restored through the divine blessing entering into human history in the events of salvation history which culminated in the triumph of Christ’s death and resurrection. In this new creation the blessings of God are communicated through Christ: he pours into our hearts ‘the Gift that contains all gifts’, the Holy Spirit, and it is in this Trinitarian dynamic that Christian liturgy and all Christian prayer becomes possible: our liturgy and our prayer is a response of faith and love to the blessings that the Father has bestowed on us in Christ; and the Church in the Spirit and through Christ blesses the Father in return. 

The Trinitarian prayer of the Church is centred on the celebration of the seven sacraments and has the Eucharist as its source and summit. The sacraments are efficacious signs, they make really present what they symbolize: that is, through these signs God shows us what he is doing to bring humanity to himself and actually does what he is showing us. In other words, in the sacraments Christ graciously reaches down through the centuries to bless us, to apply to Christians the merits of His sacrifice so that we might share His resurrection. The superabundant merits of Christ overflow onto us so that we can share in his Divine life, in this way the blessing of Christ also spills out beyond the sacramental liturgy into the rest of our lives. 

 

This ‘spilling over’ of the sacraments into our everyday lives can be moral or spiritual. For example, holy men and women are often said to lead ‘Eucharistic lives’: lives of sacrifice, love and thanksgiving that extend the sacrifice of mass into their everyday life. Complementing this moral and spiritual dimension, we can also think of our sacramental life spilling over into our devotional life through what the Church calls ‘sacramentals’. These are also sacred signs and as such they bear a resemblance to the sacraments, but their chief effect is to better dispose us to receive, embrace and co-operate with the transforming power of the sacraments themselves.

Sacramentals derive from our baptismal priesthood. Every Christian is called to be a blessing and to bless, that is, to be an instrument of divine gift and to offer thanksgiving. This makes blessings the most significant of all the sacramentals. Every blessing praises God and offers back to Him His gifts. When we invoke the name of Jesus and put people and things under the sign of Christ’s Cross, we offer these people and things to God as a gift so that he might turn them towards the sanctification of men and women. The practice, then, of blessing devotional items such as rosaries, objects that play a key role in structuring our lives such as our homes, even an object we work with such as a computer, and people, is a way of extending our sacramental life into our everyday life so that we might more fully embrace both in holiness and truth.

Day of Recollection at Boars' Hill

And He said to them, "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while." For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat (Mark 6:31).

Everyone can appreciate these words of Our Lord, as rest is so precious. But for busy Dominicans, who are simultaneously called to a life of quiet contemplation and active preaching, this can be a particularly urgent call. We have to pray, yet we also have to get all our work done. Then again, I don't know many Dominicans who would prioritise evangelisation over eating! So perhaps we do know how to take a break.

Still, we need that precious time in prayer. So it was that, on Thursday last week, the whole community of Blackfriars, Oxford went up the mountain, both literally and figuratively, for a day of recollection at the Carmelite Priory on Boars' Hill. 

Overlooking the 'dreaming spires' of Oxford, not far from where Matthew Arnold received the inspiration for his poem, the Carmel here is ideally situated for a day of restful retreat to prepare for the new academic year. 

Fr James McCaffrey OCD, in two talks, helped us to understand the bridge between contemplation and action; indeed, time spent with Christ is always 'truly apostolic activity'. The first talk took us through the dialogue about the Eucharist in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel, with sideways glances at other Eucharistic passages in the New Testament. Speaking without notes, it was impressive just to hear how much Scripture was held in Fr McCaffrey's memory, and deeply he had studied and prayed with the text. The theme of love, especially that Jesus 'loved them [his disciples] to the end' (Jn 13:1), as told in the Last Supper discourse, helped to illumine the earlier exposition of Chapter 6. In the second talk, Fr McCaffrey highlighted (again from memory) all the passages in John's Gospel that speak of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is presented again and again as both Teacher and Witness. Above all, the message is that Jesus is the abiding place of the Holy Spirit.

There was, in addition, plenty of time for private prayer and meditation, quiet walks in the countryside, and browsing the excellent Carmelite bookshop. Then, before Vespers, the whole community gathered to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament. In all, the day was a particularly special moment for our Dominican community, to take time out of our own personal and community schedules in order to rest and pray together on retreat.

Since Fr McCaffrey enriched his talks with poetic quotations and prayers from the great Carmelite saints, here is one of those prayers which I'd like to share with you. It is by St Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, better known as Edith Stein.

Who are you, kindly light, who fill me now and brighten all the darkness of my heart? 

You guide me forward like a mother's hand and, if you let me go, I could not take a single step alone.

You are the space, embracing all my being, hidden in it and what name can contain you? 

You, Holy Spirit, 

you, eternal love!