Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVIII, 4 October). Today is the third anniversary of the horrific attacks on kibbutzim close to the border between Israel and Gaza on 7 October 2023.
Later this evening, I hope to take part in the choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 11: 1-4 (NRSVA):
1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ 2 He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’
Today’s Reflections:
The version of the Lord’s Prayer in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 11: 2-4) is not the same as the familiar text we use, based on the version in Saint Matthew’s text.
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.
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; ours is exemplified by the Lord’s Prayer, which is a communal rather than individual prayer, expressed in the plural and not the singular:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.
We approach God in a personal way, as Father. We then bring before him five 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.
At synods and mission conferences, we often 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 bring our needs before God, both physical (‘daily bread,’ verse 3) and spiritual (forgiveness, verse 4), and the final petition has an eschatological dimension, looks forward to the fulfilment of all God’s promises, in God’s own time (‘the time of trial,’ verse 4).
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, collective 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.’
When we say ‘Amen’ at the end, are we really saying ‘Amen’ to the holiness of God’s name, to the coming of the 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 falling into no evil or into no 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 as we pray together:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 7 October 2026):
In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, 4-10 October 2026 (pp 44-45), is ‘The Gun, The Sword, and The Bible’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Revd Les Isaac OBE, founder and President of Ascension Trust and co-founder of Street Pastors.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 7 October 2026) invites us to pray:
Father, teach us to recognise that you have called all peoples into Your Kingdom. Break down division and unite us as true brothers and sisters in Christ.
The Collect of the Day:
Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
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:
We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.
Additional Collect:
God, our judge and saviour,
teach us to be open to your truth
and to trust in your love,
that we may live each day
with confidence in the salvation which is given
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
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