Scripture Reflection for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Genesis 18:20-32
Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8
Colossians 2:12-14
Luke 11:1-13
“If we pray rightly,” St. Augustine taught, “we say nothing but what is already contained in the Lord’s Prayer.” The prayer is, he thought, the summary of all right desires, the summary of all petitions. If what a person prays for cannot be included in the Lord’s Prayer, if it is not unlawful, it is at least “not spiritual,” he believed.
For St. Augustine, the prayer Jesus taught his disciples truly is the perfect prayer, a prayer containing all prayer.
The disciples had watched Jesus pray to his Father “in the Holy Spirit.” Jesus thanked his Father for the revelation shared through him to his disciples, to the “infants” he had chosen. “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Luke 10:21-22). Basically, Jesus was praising his Father for the incarnation, that the only-begotten Son does indeed make the Father known (John 1:18).
They see Jesus praying again, and this time they ask him, “teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). The succinct petitions recorded in Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer draw the disciples into the spiritual reality of the prayer they heard Jesus praying earlier.
Earlier, Jesus thanked his Father for the revelation he shared through him, that the Father is revealed in the Son. Now, by teaching his disciples to pray for the hallowing of the Father’s name and for his kingdom’s advent, Jesus is enlisting his disciples into the same work of the Son, the work of revealing the Father.
As Jesus reveals the Father, so too may the disciples reveal him. That is, only if hallowing the name and praying for the kingdom become real, not only in the prayer of disciples but also in their lives. That’s why I think the petitions that follow are so simple and so spiritual and so moral, so practical and demanding. Because the prayer is meant primarily to conform us to Jesus Christ.
“Give us each day our daily bread” (Luke 11:3). There have long been questions about this petition. Does it refer to daily sustenance, to relying on God in our poverty, to the Eucharist, or to all the above? I like to think the petition includes all of it.
Jesus wants his disciples to rely on the Father’s provision and not their own, just as he does nothing of his own accord but only what he sees the Father doing, just as he lives not on bread alone but “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (John 5:18; Matthew 4:4).
And then there is the petition to “forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4). Here Jesus wants his disciples simply to practice mercy, but to practice it as God practices it. “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same” (Matthew 5:46)? Jesus is asking his disciples to pray for the grace to forgive even those who know not what they do (Luke 23:34).
And what about “lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:4)? There is something particularly beautiful about this petition, how it’s Jesus himself who asks us to pray it. Jesus sympathizes with our weakness; he knows we need to pray for this (Hebrews 4:15). And so, how is this petition not an invitation to find the same strength Jesus found in prayer in the wilderness and in Gethsemane (Luke 4:1-13; 22:39-44)?
How is it not akin to the exhortation found in 1 Peter? “Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, so that…they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12). The plea of the disciples is that we may resist evil, that God may help us resist it, that we may resist evil so as to shine in Christ, like Christ – like light, like him.
I think the purpose of the Lord’s Prayer is that it forms us in Christ, as Christ – “until Christ be formed in you,” as St. Paul said (Galatians 4:19). Which is also why I think Jesus suggested we pray this prayer repeatedly.
This explains, I think, the parable that immediately follows, that story about the old man tucked in for the night and his friend who won’t stop knocking on the door; it’s a story about never giving up on prayer. We must pray the Lord’s Prayer repeatedly.
That’s the simple point. It’s why I think we pray it just before receiving Holy Communion, for example, just after the Body and Blood is made present on the Altar. Because it’s a prayer that shapes us, Christ-shaped. It’s a prayer that over time and by grace is meant to completely change us.
And so we dare to say.
Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books.
