Prayer

Woohoo! 60th post! Here we come to the beginning of Lent, and the end ouf our Trilogy of topics from Matthew 6. Stay tuned for the heart-stopping, action packed conclusion! ...Or something like that ;)

Sorry for the delay in getting this out. It was due to be finished last Thursday afternoon, but work stuff sidetracked me, and I haven't seen a computer until today! So, without any further ado...

Matthew 6:5-15

'And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward. But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.
'In your prayers, do not babble as the gentiles do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard. Do not be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. So you should pray like this:

Our Father in heaven,
may Your name be held holy,
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive those who are in debt to us.
And do not put us to the test,
but save us from the Evil One.

'Yes, if you forgive others their failings, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours; but if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive your failings either.

In the first two verses, Jesus makes exactly the same point about prayer as He does about almsgiving and fasting, namely that we need to do it out of sincere motives and a desire to serve God, not out of a desire to appear spiritual before men. Jesus again says that those who pray, just as those who give alms and fast, out of hypocritical and pretentious motives, receive their reward. What does He mean? That those who give and fast and pray in order to get praise from others will only ever get praise from others as a reward for their religiosity. But as we have seen with the previous posts, and now here, God will reward those who serve Him for His sake, sincerely. How? As I mentioned in almsgiving, the Bible talks about the reward being the removal of the penalty of sin. With fasting, the reward is a greater knowledge and intimacy with God. As we'll see in a minute, the divine reward for prayer is a bit of both.

Jesus spends a little bit more time on prayer than on almsgiving and fasting (which is why I saved it until last). After warning about doing it for false motives, Jesus then warns us against doing it with false methods. And instead of comparing the true way with that of the hypocrites, He contrasts true prayer with that of the gentiles--namely, the pagan peoples who worshipped false gods and relied on magic incantations and long, babbling prayers to appeal to those false gods. It's important to understand that distinction, because so many people misinterpret this passage. Many, many people (mainly Protestants) think that Jesus is condemning the repetition of written or memorised prayers, as in the Catholic Rosary, for example. In fact, many translations of the Bible use the phrase "vain repitition" where the New Jerusalem Bible quoted above says "babbling."

But there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Number 1, not all repitition is "vain" or worthless. Jesus is not condemning the repitition of phrases or recited prayers. He is condemning, again, the motive or belief behind the repitition--namely, the notion that if we say a prayer enough times, or say precisely the right words, then God will do something, or reply, or grant our request. This is not prayer, this is magic, and that's why Jesus condemns it--that kind of repitition makes God out to be something we can control or manipulate--and that, as we'll see in a minute, is a sinful attitude!

Second, repitition becomes bad when it is no longer sincere, but simply rattling off words. This can happen very easily when we commit prayers to memory. If we are not careful, that memorised prayer can become meaningless when we fail to engage our minds in the recitation. The Church has given us a wonderful gift in its collections of prayers from various saints throughout the ages, don't get me wrong! They are so useful in expressing thoughts and desires that we ourselve can't always find the words for. But when we read or recite such prayers, we must always mean them, and speak them with sincerity.

For any Protestant (or Catholic) readers who practice a more spontaneous form of prayer, and are thinking "I don't have to worry about that!" consider your own prayers. Take note, in a single prayer, how many times you repeat certain clichéed phrases. Growing up, I noticed that many people replaced the word "um" in their prayers, with "Lord." If that's not "vain repitition" then what is? And that's not to mention a worship service where the songs might be sung over and over. Now, I'm not attacking other traditions here, but I want to point out just what it is that Jesus is and is not referring to, and that is this: Prayer must never be reduced to a magic formula.

To counter this, Jesus gives us the Our Father as an antidote. This simple, direct prayer is packed with meaning, and must be prayed with an understanding of that meaning. More, the meaning of the Our Father must inform all of our other prayers. So let's break it down:

Our Father in heaven
These words are perhaps the most important part of this prayer--maybe even all of Scripture! God, the All-Powerful Creator of the Universe, is our Father?! If we really ponder the idea, it is ludicrous! How can we dare to approach God, as if He were our Daddy? There is absolutely no way that we could, on our own. But that's just it: we aren't on our own! Through Jesus' Death and Resurrection, He makes us able to become the sons and daughters of God!

St. John writes in his first epistle, "You must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God's children--which is what we are!" (1 John 3:1.) That word, "lavished", describes it beautifully. Think of it like painting: you can put just a little bit of paint on the brush, and gently apply it to the canvass, or you can dip a big brush into the bucket and just slather that canvass! That's the idea behind "lavish". God is just heaping His love on us, saying, "Here! Have some more! And more! And more!" That's what it means to be His Children! That's what it means when we pray, "Our Father"!

May Your name be held holy
But in case we start taking the Father for granted, and approaching Him like we would our fathers, "Hey Dad, can I have 5 bucks?" the next line returns us to the right perspecitve. Yes, God is our Father, and He lavishes His love on us, but He is still holy, and deserves our awe, respect, and worship! On the one hand, we can curl up in His lap and call Him "Daddy", and on the other, we revere and adore Him as the All-Holy King of the Universe! There is and must be a balance between these perspectives, for they are both equally true.

Your kingdom come / Your will be done / on earth as in heaven
Since God is King, He obviously has a Kingdom, and that Heavenly Kingdom needs to be realised here on earth, so we pray that He would be present here with us, working out His Will on earth. So what's His Kingdom? St. Paul describes it as "the saving justice, the peace, and the joy brought by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17). This is what we pray for--and the awesome thing is that when we pray for it, God chooses then to include us in the realising of it! He expects us to work to bring saving justice, peace, and joy to the world through the Holy Spirit working within us!

Give us today our daily bread
If God expects so much from us, then we can be assured that He will make it possible. This line in the prayer has a two-fold meaning. In the first place, we see that Jesus urges us to pray that God will meet our every need. But more, there is a reason that we pray the Our Father right before we receive the Eucharist at Mass: Since the earliest times, the Church has seen this line fulfilled in the Real Presence of Christ, who Himself is the Bread of Heaven, which is daily available in the Catholic Church! Through the Grace given by His presence, we truly can accomplish living a life that brings about His Kingdom!

And forgive us our debts, / as we forgive those who are in debt to us
Not only does Jesus meet our every need, and empower us by His Flesh and Blood, but He forgives our sins, as well! God desires to again, lavish grace and mercy upon us, but He again makes it conditional: we must also be willing to forgive. Just as Jesus said in the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy shown them," He reiterates here when He says, "'Yes, if you forgive others their failings, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours; but if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive your failings either'" (Matthew 6:14-15). If God gives us so great a grace through such a high cost (Jesus' suffering and death), then we are expected to bestow that same grace upon everyone who has harmed us!

And do not put us to the test, / but save us from the Evil One
Finally, we learn that we can not only be forgiven of our failings, but that we can even be preserved from temptations! Staying close to God is staying far from Sin. Through Jesus, we are given the grace to flee temptation and resist the Devil (cf. James 4:7). St. Paul reassures us in 1 Corinthians 10:13, that "none of the trials which have come upon you is more than a human being can stand. You can trust that God will not let you be put to the test beyond your strength, but with any trial will also provide a way out by enabling you to put up with it"!

Praise God that He is so loving to us, that He meets all our needs and forgives our sins! That is what it means to have God as our Father! So let us draw close to Him in prayer in this season of Lent and all throughout our lives!

Let us Pray!