Patrick Comerford
Lent began last week on Ash Wednesday, and this week began with the First Sunday in Lent (Lent I).
Later this afternoon, I have yet another series of tests in Milton Keynes University Hospital. But I hope to be back in Stony Stratford this evening in time for a local committe involved in public sculpture in the town centre. Before this day begins, though, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 6: 7-15 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 7 ‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 ‘Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
14 ‘For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’
Today’s Reflection:
The Gospel reading today (Matthew 6: 7-15) provides the verses that we missed in our Gospel reading last week on Ash Wednesday (Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21).
We are all so familiar with the Lord’s Prayer, that we often recite it by rote without noticing the significance and intention of each petition. Have you noticed this in your own prayer life?
The Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel reading this morning is the more familiar version, but there is another, shorter and slightly different version in Saint Luke’s Gospel (see Luke 11: 2-4).
In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Christ teaches the Lord’s Prayer within the context of the Sermon on the Mount. But in Saint Luke’s Gospel, immediately after visiting the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany, Christ finds a private place to pray. It is then that the disciples ask him to teach them ‘to pray, as John taught his disciples.’
The disciples are already familiar not only with the prayers of Saint John the Baptist, but also with traditional Jewish prayers in the home, in the synagogue and in the Temple in Jerusalem.
So why did they ask Jesus to teach them how to pray?
As a rabbi and a religious leader, Jesus was responsible for teaching his followers how to fulfil Jewish religious commandments, including the obligation to pray at certain times and in certain forms.
Then and now, a religious community has a distinctive way of praying; for Anglicans and most other Christian traditions, it is exemplified by the Lord’s Prayer, which is a communal rather than individual prayer, expressed in the plural and not the singular:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
We approach God in a personal way, as Father. We then bring before him petitions that are not on behalf of me personally, but on behalf of us, on behalf of all.
Sometimes we miss out on the impact of the Lord’s Prayer because we are so familiar with it. But in the public worship of the Church we often facilitate people missing out on the impact of the Lord’s Prayer when we privatise it.
Many of us were taught to pray the Lord’s Prayer as a private personal prayer as children, perhaps even saying it kneeling by our bedside, hands joined together, fingers pointing up.
So often, in our churches, we encourage people to kneel for the Lord’s Prayer, as if this was now both the most sacred and the most personal part of the Liturgy, rather than asking them to remain standing and to continue in collective prayer.
Or, at great public events, such as synods and mission conferences, we invite everyone present to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own first language. In this way, a collective, public prayer becomes a private, personal prayer, detached from and ignoring where everyone else is at each stage in the petitions.
As someone with English as my first language, I often notice how others finish a lot later than we do – the Finns in particular, but even the Germans too. Each language has its own rhythms and cadences. And the cacophony and conflicting rhythms mean it sounds as if we are in Babel rather than praying together, collectively and in the plural.
The first two petitions place us in God’s presence (‘hallowed be your name’ and ‘your kingdom come’). The next two then ask to control of our lives and of life around us: ‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ The next two bring our needs before God, both physical (‘daily bread’) and spiritual (forgiveness, verse 4). The final petitions have an eschatological dimension, looking forward to the fulfilment of all God’s promises, in God’s own time (‘the time of trial’ and being rescued from evil).
The ‘time of trial’ is the final onslaught of evil forces, before Christ comes again, but also refers to the temptations we experience day-by-day.
So there is a temporal and an eternal dimension to these petitions, even when we pray for ourselves in the here and now.
The privatisation of the Lord’s Prayer, even on Sundays, takes away from its impact and from the collective thrust of each of the petitions.
Jesus, when he is teaching us to pray, is responding not to one individual but to the disciples as the core, formative group of the Church. God is addressed not as my Father, but our Father, and each petition that follows is in the plural: our daily bread, our forgiveness, our sins, our debts, how we forgive, and do not ‘bring us’ to trial or temptation.
When we say ‘Amen’ at the end, are we really saying ‘Amen’ to the holiness of God’s name, to the coming of Kingdom, to the needs of each being met, on a daily basis, to forgiveness, both given and received, to being put on the path of righteousness and justice, to others not falling into evil or into any harm.
If we privatise the Lord’s Prayer, we leave little room for its collective impact to grab a hold of those who are praying, and we leave little room for our own conversion, which is a continuing and daily need.
And so, let the kingdom, the power and the glory be God’s, both now and for ever, Amen.
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 11 March 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Church and Unity.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by the Right Revd Dr Royce M Victor, Bishop in the Diocese of Malabar, Church of South India.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 11 March 2025) invites us to pray:
Let us pray for all believers in our community – may our core beliefs unify us so that we can live in peace.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Lord God,
you have renewed us with the living bread from heaven;
by it you nourish our faith,
increase our hope,
and strengthen our love:
teach us always to hunger for him who is the true and living bread,
and enable us to live by every word
that proceeds from out of your mouth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Heavenly Father,
your Son battled with the powers of darkness,
and grew closer to you in the desert:
help us to use these days to grow in wisdom and prayer
that we may witness to your saving love
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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