Wednesday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Ezekiel 9:1-7; 10:18-22

Today’s reading is in two parts:

1. Slaughter of idolaters (chap 9);
2. God’s glory leaves the Temple (chap 10).

It is another apocalyptic-style account using very symbolic language in which God’s punishment comes on all those who have sinned.

As Ezekiel listens, there comes the thundering voice of God. He is calling on the “executioners of the city”, that is, those who are to inflict punishment on wrongdoers.

Immediately six men are seen coming from the gate on the north side of Jerusalem, each one armed with a deadly weapon, a war-club or a battle-axe. In their midst is another man, dressed in white and with a scribe’s ink horn in his belt. Clearly the latter is the one who keeps a record of people’s doings. These are the six guardian angels of the city, with the seventh dressed in linen. They correspond to the seven angels of the judgement in the Book of Revelation (8:2,6).

They stop in front of the bronze altar in the Temple. Now the glory of the Lord, traditionally understood as seated on the cherubim (in the Holy of Holies), moves towards the Temple threshold. God is leaving the Temple.

He gives instructions to the man in white. He is to put a mark on the foreheads of all those who deplore the idolatrous practices that are going on. These are the faithful remnant of God’s people. The mark was a taw, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which looks like an “x” (and so translated as “cross”). The rest were to be mercilessly struck down. (The text does not indicate that anyone was, in fact, found worthy to be marked with a taw, but it would indicate the remnant that was spared to return from exile.)

Ezekiel is the preeminent prophet of personal and individual retribution. The innocent inhabitants of Jerusalem are to be spared, while those guilty of idolatry are punished. With other prophets, the whole community, the innocent along with the guilty, may be punished.

The punishment begins right at the entrance to the Temple where God’s people are, and begins with the eldest and excludes none—old men, youths and maidens, women and children. The Temple is to become defiled with the corpses of people who are unclean. It does not matter because Yahweh is no longer there.

In the second part of the reading, Yahweh leaves his sanctuary. Riding as usual on the cherubim, he leaves the Temple by the east gate. The east gate was the main ceremonial entrance into the Temple and was also known as “gate of the house of the Lord”. It overlooked the Kidron Valley towards the Mount of Olives.

Now Yahweh has left Jerusalem and the Temple. The prophet says that:

The cherubim lifted up their wings and rose up from the earth in my sight as they went out with the wheels beside them. They stopped at the entrance of the east gate of the house of the Lord, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them.

For us Christians, God is never confined to one place. He is everywhere and we are urged to seek and find him in all things. We do not seek him in a temple. On the contrary, we are called to be his temple, the place where he is present. We can, however, expel him from our hearts and bring ruin on ourselves just as the people of Jerusalem did. The choice is ours.

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Tuesday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 18:1-5,10,12-14

Today we come to the fourth of the five discourses which are the distinctive characteristic of Matthew’s Gospel. This one focuses on the Church (and is called the “Discourse on the Church”), the Christian community, and in particular the relationships among its members.

The reading begins with Jesus asking the question:

Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

By implication, this question is asking about the greatest in the Christian community—a sign of the Kingdom.

Jesus answers the question very simply by putting a child in front of his disciples. To become the greatest is to become a small child.

Why? Children have many precious qualities. They are born free of prejudice and they are totally open to learning. It is these qualities, which we tend to lose as we grow up, that we need to enter the Reign of God. We need to be totally open and free of prejudice when it comes to listening to God, and to allow ourselves to be fully teachable, malleable and flexible. Then we will be ready to receive everything that God wants us to have, and to become everything God wants us to become. Furthermore, to welcome a person who has these qualities in Jesus’ name is to welcome Christ himself.

From that the Gospel moves on to another related consideration. It skips a passage which deals with those who cause others to fall into sin and the kind of punishment such people deserve. Instead, it moves from children to the “little ones”. The “little ones” are not just children, but the weaker ones in the community, and they may be adults. But they are the ones who can very easily be led astray by the bad example which others give. And there are severe penalties for doing this (which are mentioned in the omitted passage).

This is emphasised by the parable of the lost sheep. God is compared to a shepherd who has lost just one sheep out of a hundred. When he finds it again he is happier than over the other ninety-nine which have not strayed. As such, the Gospel concludes:

So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

How terrible, then, if one of us is responsible for someone’s being separated from God forever! Sadly, sometimes it feels like that happens quite a lot in our society and in our Church.

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Monday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 17:22-27

For the second time Jesus warns his disciples about what is to come: his suffering, death and resurrection. Once again the word ‘delivered’ or ‘handed over’ (Greek, emiparadidomi) is used. It is a refrain running right through the Gospels—applied to John the Baptist, to Jesus, to the disciples, and to the giving of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist.

We are told that the disciples are overwhelmed with grief over what Jesus says. Whether that is purely out of sorrow for Jesus, or whether it represents their disillusionment, is hard to say. This was not the kind of end they were expecting to the coming of the Messiah.

The second part of today’s reading is a peculiar scene, only to be found in Matthew. The collectors of the temple tax want to know whether Jesus pays it or not. Peter assures them that he does.

But on entering the house (there is that anonymous ‘house’ again, which seems to symbolise the Church or the Christian community), Jesus asks Peter (though, interestingly, he calls him by his old name ‘Simon’):

What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?

In other words, from whom do they collect taxes, from their subjects, or from foreigners? Peter replies:

From others…

And, in fact, the Romans did collect taxes from their colonised peoples and not from their own citizens.

In that case, Jesus says, the sons—that is, he and his disciples—should be exempt from paying the temple tax. After all, the Temple is God’s house, and Jesus is his Son, and his disciples are his brothers, sons of the same Father.

But to avoid giving scandal and misunderstanding, Peter is told to catch a fish in whose mouth he will find a shekel, enough to pay taxes for both of them. A half shekel was levied each year on all Jewish males of 20 years or older. It was for the upkeep of the Temple. A half shekel at this time was roughly equivalent to two days’ wages.

This passage seems to reflect a dilemma of the early Church, in fact, a double dilemma. Should Christians who are Jews continue to pay the temple tax? And, should Christians in general have to pay tax to a pagan government, especially one whose emperor claims to be a deity?

The first dilemma solved itself in time, especially with the destruction of the Temple (which had already taken place when Matthew’s Gospel was written). The second dilemma took longer. The problem seems to have been solved by the principle laid down elsewhere by Jesus:

Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. (Matt 22:21)

We too have to discern what is legitimately required of us by our governments and make our contribution to the needs of our society while, at the same time, not compromising on issues where universal principles of truth and justice are at stake. Civil disobedience is sometimes not only a right, but also a responsibility.

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Monday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Ezekiel 1:2-5,24-28

Today we begin reading from the prophet Ezekiel. The language is often very apocalyptic in style and full of symbolism. His special contribution to the prophetic tradition was through his interest in the Temple and liturgy. He also had a great influence on the period after the Exile, when the refugee Jews returned to Jerusalem. He has been called the “father of Judaism”.

Ezekiel became a prophet in Babylon, as a member of the first group of exiles deported by King Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC. He was the first to receive the prophetic call outside of Israel. His first task was to prepare his fellow countrymen in Babylon for the final destruction of Jerusalem—which they believed God would not allow to happen. But Ezekiel reproached Israel for its sinful and idolatrous behaviour, and foretold more destruction and a second and more complete deportation into exile for the people of Jerusalem. All of which, of course, happened in 587 BC. But after this event, just as Jeremiah had believed, Ezekiel thought that the exiles were the hope of Israel’s restoration, once God’s allotted time for the exile had been accomplished and they could return to Jerusalem.

Today’s reading begins by introducing Ezekiel in the third person. The time of this first vision is dated as the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile in Babylon (593-92 BC). The name Ezekiel means “God is strong”, or “God strengthens”, or “God makes hard” in different contexts of the book. The prophet, like Jeremiah, belonged to a priestly family. (Note that the ‘el’ in a Hebrew name refers to God. For example, the names of the archangels are Micha-el, Gabri-el and Rapha-el.)

Ezekiel, still being spoken of in the third person, says:

…the hand of the Lord was on him there.

This phrase is repeated six times in the book, and indicates a powerful experience of God revealing himself in a vision.

The experience described here in part is called the “Chariot of Yahweh”. Its central message is that God transcends any specific place. He is not, as the tradition held, tied to the Temple in Jerusalem, but can be with his people in their exile (as he was with them in their journey through the desert during the Exodus). This is a breakthrough which will be picked up by the people of the New Testament and emphasised by Paul.

The vision begins with the words, “As I looked”. The symbols at the opening of the vision all speak of the presence and power of God: the stormy wind, the great cloud surrounded by light, the fire with flashes of lightning looking:

…like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all around…

In the centre appear what seem to be four animals in human form. ‘Four’ represents completeness as also seen elsewhere in the Old Testament by the image of four directions and four quarters of the earth. The idea appears several times in this chapter and over 40 times in the whole book.

The four creatures (which are later referred to as “cherubim”) attend on God’s throne. Here they represent God’s creation. In our reading their detailed description has been omitted, but the four separately symbolise:

• humanity—God’s appointed ruler of creation (see the creation story in Genesis);
• the lion—the strongest of wild animals;
• the ox—the most powerful of domestic animals;
• the eagle—the greatest of the birds.

They will appear again in the Book of Revelation, and are commonly depicted in medieval art where they represent the four evangelists (Matthew the man; Mark the lion; Luke the ox; and John the eagle).

Above the vault over the heads of the cherubim was a sapphire shaped like a throne on which sat “something that seemed like a human form”. This is the prophet’s way of describing God, but he is careful not to say that he saw God directly—no one could see God and live.

Again from his loins upward and downward, the figure like a man was surrounded by fire:

…and there was a splendor all around. Like the bow in a cloud on a rainy day, such was the appearance of the splendor all around.

To the prophet it all spoke of the glory and presence of the Lord, and he fell to the ground in adoration. The glory of Yahweh is often described in the Bible as a bright cloud (e.g. the pillar of cloud with the Exodus people, and Jesus covered by a cloud during the Transfiguration). Also, after his resurrection, Jesus ascends into a cloud—that is, into the presence of his Father (see Acts 1:9).

What is significant here is that for so many centuries God’s glory and presence had been linked to the Temple in Jerusalem. But now the Temple is far away and God is with his people in their Babylonian exile. This is a major theme in the first half of Ezekiel’s message. This is a foretaste of the presence of God through Jesus and, through the Spirit, in the Church, where God’s people become his temple.

Spirituality in later times will also constantly find the glory of God in all of creation. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” God is always with us revealing his truth, goodness and beauty to us. It is for us to open our eyes and learn to see. We may not have apocalyptic visions like Ezekiel, but we are surrounded by dazzling beauty if only we would look.

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Living Space – onlining instructions (PDF)

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If you are wondering about the value of the work, read some of the comments here!

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Monday of Week 25 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Proverbs 3:27-34

Today we return to the Old Testament and begin reading from some of the so-called “Wisdom” books. This week we will be reading selections from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The books consist of a series of ‘wise sayings’ emanating from the educated and leading class of the Jewish people in the period following the return from exile in Babylon. These books are quite different in style from the prophets, and tend to deal with the behaviour of individuals and close relationships and right thinking. They have relatively little to say about abuses against injustice—a major concern of the prophets we have been reading in recent weeks.

The Book of Proverbs is a collection of moral and religious instruction given to young Jews by learned teachers. Proverbs is the most typical example of a ‘wisdom’ book in the Old Testament (compare with Job and Ecclesiastes). Its emphasis is on moral probity based on religion. Proverbs teaches that reward and punishment follow in this life. It appeals to the lessons of experience, rather than to revelation, and it contains a brief, but significant exploration of the nature of wisdom and of wis­dom’s relation to God.

Today’s reading touches on relations with the ‘neighbour’. In the Old Testament, ‘neighbour’ originally referred to a person who was close to one in some way as a friend or associate. In general, it included those who shared one’s culture and religion. However, in Proverbs it has the wider meaning as expressed by the term ‘fellow-man’.

We are in the first stage of broadening the concept of those to whom we owe love and respect. Jesus will give the word a universal meaning with his parable of the Good Samaritan, and the injunction to love all—including enemies.

Today, Proverbs says we ought to extend help to any brother or sister whenever they are in genuine need. Later, we read in the First Letter of John:

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?…let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. (1 John 3:17-18)

And we read in the Letter of James:

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? (James 2:15-16)

At the same time, we are told never to make evil plans against another unsuspecting person. We should not pick a quarrel with someone who has done nothing against us.

In general, we are never to imitate people of violence. The apparent prosperity of violent people and other enemies of God’s people was always seen as a threat to their fidelity to Yahweh. Later, it would even become a serious theological problem. So much so that Jeremiah asks the Lord:

Why does the way of the guilty prosper?
Why do all who are treacherous thrive? (Jer 12:1)

And Job asks:

Why do the wicked live on,
reach old age, and grow mighty in power? (Job 21:7)

These are questions we can be tempted to ask in our own day.

However, immoral behaviour is something which can never be condoned by God. God abhors pagan practices and all forms of moral abuse. On the other hand, with the Lord:

…the upright are in his confidence.

All of this we can find spelt out much more clearly in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Jesus at the Last Supper will tell his disciples that they are his friends:

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. (John 15:15)

Says Proverbs:

The Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked,
but he blesses the abode of the righteous.
Toward the scorners he is scornful,
but to the humble he shows favor.

The arrogant will get their comeuppance, but God’s grace flows into the heart of the humble.

It is important that we do not read these words as indicating a vindictive God who clobbers the wrongdoers and rewards the good. God has no need to intervene directly. A life that is objectively and subjectively evil may bring wealth, material success and power, but it is most unlikely to bring the more precious gifts of inner peace and harmony between God and one’s brothers and sisters.

On the other hand, the truly good person, even though his life on the surface may seem to be one of hardship, experiences a peace and strength that no adversity can take away.

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Monday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Kings 17:5-8,13-15,18

We continue today with the tragic tale of the kings and the punishments they and their people experienced for their serious violation of the Lord’s will for them. We see in today’s reading the fall in 721 BC of the Northern Kingdom (variously called Israel, Samaria or the Ten Tribes, as opposed to the Southern Kingdom known also as Judah).

This all happened in the reign of King Hoshea, who reigned for nine years altogether. However, “he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord,” although his behaviour was not as bad as some of his predecessors. He fell victim to an Assyrian invasion and became a vassal of the Assyrian King Shalmaneser. However, after violating the terms of his vassalage by sending envoys to the king of Egypt and failing to pay tribute to the Assyrians, he was arrested and thrown into prison.

The whole of Samaria was then invaded and the city of Samaria was captured. The well-defended city took three years to overcome. Shalmaneser died just before the capture—possibly by assassination—and the actual capture was effected by his son, Sargon II. In his annals Sargon laid claim to the capture of Samaria at the beginning of his reign, but it was hardly more than a mopping-up operation.

This spelt the end of Hoshea’s reign and it saw a major deportation of the Israelites to exile in Assyria. In his annals, Sargon II claims to have deported 27,290 Israelites. They were brought to Halah, whose location is uncertain, but it was near the Habor, a river not far from Haran in the extreme north of Mesopotamia. (The name ‘Mesopotamia’ means ‘between rivers’ because it lies between the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and corresponds more or less to Iraq today.) Gozan was an Assyrian provincial capital located on a tributary of the Euphrates. The “cities of the Medes” lay east of Mesopotamia (in Persia or Iran). They were towns located in the area south of the Caspian Sea and northeast of the Tigris River. The Israelite settlements there would form the background for the story of Tobit (which we read at another time in the liturgical cycle).

And so the second part of the reading is a commentary on why all of this happened. The events described in today’s readings are clearly attributed to the sins of Israelites against their God, the God who had brought them up out of the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. In the Old Testament, things seldom happen by chance nor are purely human agencies involved. Good things indicate God’s blessings and bad things his displeasure.

What happened was due to the Samaritans’ continual worship of the idols worshipped by their conquerors. (It seems that it was this kind of situation that Jesus was referring to when he told the Samaritan woman that she had had “five husbands”. Each time it was conquered by an invading force, Samaria had adopted the religion of its new masters.)

The accusations do not seem to come from one source, but are a compilation of several. For the principal author of the book the grievous fault of Israel is the religious pluralism, an ‘original sin’ of which every king of Israel is accused. The language is rich in reminiscences of Deuteronomy and the prophets (especially Jeremiah) as it denounces religious compromise and the setting up of local and idolatrous shrines.

Israel repeatedly spurned the Lord’s graciousness to it, and refused to heed the prophets’ warnings of impending judgement and had failed to keep her covenant obligations. The result was the implementation of the covenant curse precisely as it had been presented to the Israelites by Moses in his final words to the Israelites before they entered Canaan (Deut 28:49-68) and in the Song of Moses (Deut 32:1-47).

Israel not only violated the requirements of the Sinai covenant, but she also spurned the words of prophets the Lord had graciously sent to call his people back to the covenant as well as the ministries of Elijah, Elisha, Amos and Hosea. Instead they showed themselves “stiff-necked”, like a stubborn ox being placed under the yoke. (A phrase used by Jesus also when speaking of the Pharisees.)

Ultimately they experienced defeat and exile as:

…the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight…

All that was left was Judah, the Southern Kingdom which included the city of Jerusalem and elements of the tribes of Simeon and Benjamin. Its behaviour was not much better and it would not escape either. Further on, but not in our reading, a second addition extends the condemnation to Judah, the Southern Kingdom.

We need to be careful about attributing painful experiences in our own lives or in the lives of others to God’s anger or vindictiveness. One hears some still believe that the scourge of serious disease or misfortune is God’s punishment. It is unthinkable that God punishes this way.

Nevertheless, sinful acts consistently indulged in are undoubtedly destructive of individuals and communities. But the effects arise out of the disordered nature of the acts themselves rather than as an act of God. And they are warnings to us that we have strayed from the paths of truth, love and integrity. We cannot blame anyone but ourselves.

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Saturday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:24-34

Today we continue with Jesus’ teaching on our attitude to material and visible things. We have to make a choice between the vision of life that Jesus offers or a preoccupation with money and possessions. They are not compatible. They involve conflicting goals in life and different visions of what is most important in life. The truly materialistic person may have a veneer of Christian practice, but cannot be a really committed Christian and vice versa.

Jesus preaches what St Ignatius Loyola calls ‘indifference’ to material things. Obviously some material things—like food and clothing and shelter—are necessary to daily living. At different times other things will be necessary too.

The attitude of ‘indifference’ is not that one does not care; on the contrary, one cares very much. But one cares to have things and to use things only in so far as they are needed to love and serve God and others for his sake. Jesus urges us to liberate ourselves from worry and anxiety about our body and material things such as food and clothing.

To be concerned about food because right now I am very hungry and do not have any is very different from worrying whether I will have food next month; to be anxious about what is happening when I am in intensive care is very different from wondering how long my health will hold up in the coming years; to be fretting because I have no money to pay my rent with the landlord knocking at the door is very different from wondering whether I will ever be rich.

Worry and anxiety about the future are a waste of time and energy yet we indulge in them so much. We are invited to:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Likewise, the flowers in the field—they do nothing except be themselves and God takes care of them. And how beautiful they are! When their time comes they pass away.

We are often so busy regretting the past or worrying about the future that we never get to enjoy life. Enjoyment and happiness are only in the present—nowhere else. If we keep looking forward or looking back we will never find happiness. And yet it is right here in our grasp at every moment of every day. As Jesuit Fr Tony de Mello has written:

“You have everything you need right now to be happy.”

How our lives would be transformed if only we could really believe that! Because happiness can only be in the now. Yesterday’s happiness is gone; tomorrow’s does not exist. If I am not happy now, I never will be.

So to follow the advice of Jesus today:

…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

God is in the here and now and nowhere else. He is always available.

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Friday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:19-23

This short passage contains two related teachings. The first may be seen as a commentary on the petition in the Lord’s Prayer:

Give us this day our daily bread…

It is a teaching about the things which are really valuable, which really count. We live in a highly materialistic world where a very large number of people seem to believe that material wealth is the solution to every problem. There is nothing that money cannot buy—no problem it cannot solve. This belief prevails even though every day it is shown to be false.

Jesus urges us to put our trust and our security in something less perishable, something more lasting. To ‘store up treasure in heaven’ is not just to pile up a whole lot of ‘good works’ which will be to our credit in the next life. That credit too can be very quickly lost. It is much more a question of growing more and more into the kind of person who is steeped in the values and the outlook of the gospel. It is less a question of doing than of becoming. We also build treasure by what we give away, by sharing with others whatever gifts we have, especially those most in need.

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)

And, as Jesus so wisely says:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Obviously, the questions for me to ask today are: Where is my treasure? What do I value most in life? And how do I reveal that in the way I live?

And that brings us to the second part:

The eye is the lamp of the body.

It is that light which we need in order to have a clear vision of what is most valuable in our lives. The person who cannot see beyond money, status, power, or fame is truly in darkness. Life is not about getting these things. Life is about who we are; it is about love and relationships.

Let us pray today for vision and light to be able to discern what are the real treasures, the most precious things of human living. In that way, our life truly becomes a Christian life.

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Thursday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:7-15

Into yesterday’s passage on how we are to worship God through prayer, alms and fasting, Matthew places a related piece of teaching on how we ought to pray. This clearly seems to be an insertion, and today we deal with it separately.

Jesus tells his disciples not to pray like many of the Gentiles. They go in for long prayers, hoping that eventually God will hear them. That is quite unnecessary, Jesus says, because our Father already knows our needs before we ask. If that is the case, why then should we bother praying at all? We do not pray to tell God what he already knows—we pray so that we will realise more deeply our own needs and our total dependence on him.

Jesus then goes on and tells his disciples how they should pray. He teaches them, in effect, what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, or the ‘Our Father’. We have become accustomed to reciting this prayer very often—at every Mass, as well as whenever we say the Rosary and at many other times.

The prayer in this form (Luke has a shorter version) contains seven petitions. Seven is a favourite number for Matthew. In listing the genealogy of Jesus he divides it into three lists of seven (chapter 1 of his Gospel); there were probably seven Beatitudes in the original text (chap 5); there are seven parables of the Kingdom (chap 13); forgiveness is to be offered not seven times, but 77 times (chap 18); and there are seven ‘Woes’ when denouncing the Pharisees (chap 23). Finally, the Gospel itself is divided into seven main sections (Infancy, five discourses, Passion).

The text of the Lord’s Prayer should not be seen as just a formula for vocal recitation. It is, rather, a series of statements and petitions in which we affirm our relationship with God, with the people around us and with the world in general. It is a statement of faith and it is, as we shall see, a highly challenging and, therefore, even rather dangerous prayer.

Let us take a brief look at the petitions one by one.

Our Father
The challenge and the danger begin right in the first two words. We address God as Father, the source of life and of everything that we have; we have nothing purely of our own. But God is not just ‘Father’; he is ‘our‘ Father. And that ‘our’ includes every single person who lives or has ever lived on this earth; not a single person can be excluded.

In addressing God as ‘our Father’ we are acknowledging that every human person (every one of us) is a child of God, and therefore, that we all belong to one huge family where we are all, in a very real way, brothers and sisters to each other. There is no room here for rejection, or hatred, or prejudice or contempt of any kind based on race, nationality, colour of skin, gender, sexual orientation, social class, religion or anything else. If I am not prepared to accept every single person as a brother or sister, I will have problems even beginning to say this prayer.

May your name be revered as holy
Other forms are ‘Hallowed be thy name’ or ‘Holy be your name’. Of course, God’s name is holy no matter what we say or think. We make this prayer more for our sake rather than for his. Here we are praying that God’s name be held in the deepest respect by people everywhere. That is sadly not the case. Some people despise his name and others do not even know it. We pray that the whole world will know God’s name, which is to say, to know and recognise God as their God and Lord, their Creator and Conserver and the final end of their lives on this earth. It is, in fact, another form of the next petition.

Your Kingdom come
We have already spoken about the nature of the Kingdom. It might be more accurate to say, ‘Your kingship come’. In other words, we pray that every person in our world may put themselves consciously and willingly under the kingship and lordship and the love of God. We do this, above all, by our working together to make this world the kind of place that God wants it to be—a place of truth and love, of justice and peace, of sharing and caring. In one sense, of course, God is Lord irrespective of our relationship to him. But it is clearly his will that people, on their part, should accept that loving lordship as the centre of their lives. And that is the work of the Church and of every single Christian, indeed of every person anywhere—to help people recognise the kingship and lordship of God and to accept it as the key to their present and future happiness.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
This, in a way, is simply another way of saying what we have already asked for in the previous two petitions—it is the will of God that people everywhere recognise the holiness of his name and submit themselves gladly to his kingship and lordship in our world. We do that most effectively by identifying totally with the mission and work of Jesus to bring life, healing and wholeness to our world. To do the will of God is not simply to throw aside what we want and accept God’s will even when it is totally contrary to our own. We are only fully doing God’s will when we can see clearly that what he wants is always what is the very best for us. And we are only fully doing his will when we fully want what he wants, when our will and his will are in perfect harmony. Then we do what he wants and we do what we want. We are praying here to reach that level of oneness.

Give us today our daily bread
While it does not look like it, this also is a highly dangerous prayer for us to make. First of all, we are only asking for what we need now. Later in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus will tell us not to be anxious about the future. We are asking for what we need today; tomorrow is another day. We take care of one day at a time.

But there is one little word here that is highly dangerous. It is the word ‘us’. Who is that ‘us’? Just me and my immediate family? Or my parish? Or my neighbourhood or my town or my country? Surely it is the same as that ‘our’ in the first petition—it includes every single person. I am praying, therefore, that every single person have bread to eat today. We know, of course, that there are millions of people (some of them in wealthy countries) who do not have enough to eat, or who suffer from malnutrition and poorly balanced diets. In praying that all of ‘us’ have our daily bread, are we expecting God to drop manna from the skies or are we not reminding ourselves that the feeding of brothers and sisters is our responsibility? If people are hungry or badly fed, it is not God’s doing. Human beings are directly responsible for this in most cases (outside of natural disasters).

This petition prayer can also include the Bread of the Eucharist. But in sharing that Bread together we are saying sacramentally that we are a sharing people and we will share our goods and blessings with others, especially those in need. Otherwise our Eucharist becomes a kind of sacrilege.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
Again, is this not another dangerous prayer to make? We are asking that God’s forgiveness to us be conditional on our readiness to forgive those we perceive to have hurt us in some way. That is a daring thing to do. And forgiveness does not simply mean uttering a few words. Forgiveness in the Scripture always includes an attempt at reconciliation between offender and offended. But even if reconciliation is not achieved, we can still forgive.

We can go even further and say that the fully Christian person is never offended—or even more, cannot be offended. The true Christian has a rock solid sense of their own security and their own inner worth which no other person can take away. When such a person is the recipient of some attack, be it verbal or physical, their first response is to reach out to the attacker with concern and sympathy. It is the attacker who has the problem, not the one attacked. Most of us have a long way to go to reach that level of inner peace. If what you say about me is true, I accept it; if it is false, then it is false. Why should I take offence?

And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one (or from evil)
In the end, we acknowledge our weaknesses and our total dependence on God’s help. We pray that we will not find ourselves in a situation where we fall seriously. We ask to be protected from the powers of evil with which we are surrounded.

Some texts conclude with:

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen

This prayer is used by many Christian denominations and has now been included in the Catholic Eucharist after the Lord’s Prayer, but separated by a prayer for peace. It is believed that this conclusion, not found in most Bible manuscripts, was introduced for liturgical reasons.

Finally, in addition to simply reciting this prayer in the rapid way we normally do, we could sometimes take it very slowly, one petition at a time and let its meaning sink in. Or we could just take one petition which is particularly meaningful to us at any time and just stay with it until it really becomes part of us.

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