Luke 11: 1-13
Opening Prayer
Father of all mercies, in the Name of Christ your Son, we
implore you, send us the Gift, pour into us your Spirit! Spirit, Paraclete, teach
us to pray in truth in the new Temple who is the Christ.
Spirit,
faithful to the Father and to us, as the dove has its nest, plead within us
incessantly with the Father, because we do not know how to pray. Spirit of
Christ, first gift to us believers, pray within us tirelessly to the Father, as
the Son taught us. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Luke 11: 1-13
To help us understand the passage:
The Gospel passage is divided into three sections:
• vv. 1-4: the prayer that Jesus
taught
• vv. 5-8: the parable of the
insistent friend
• vv. 9-13: the teaching on the efficacy of prayer. The text:
1 He
was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said
to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." 2 And he said to them, "When you pray, say:
"Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread; 4 and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who
is indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation."
5 And
he said to them, "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight
and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; 6 for a friend of mine has
arrived on a journey, and I have nothing
to set before him'; 7 and he will
answer from within, 'Do not bother me; the door
is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up
and give
you anything? 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything
because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give
him whatever he needs. 9 And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek,
and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and
he who seeks finds,
and to him who knocks it
will be opened. 11 What father among
you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg,
will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
A Moment of Prayerful Silence
• Like the disciples, we too come together around Jesus who prays
alone. We gather around Him and in
Him all our energies,
every thought, every
commitment and preoccupation, our hopes, and pains …
• Today
it is we who are
those disciples who see the Master praying and allow themselves to be involved in his
prayer, which, evidently, was quite special.
• Today his words are addressed to us, the invitation to trust in
the love of the Father is addressed to us, We are so
taken up with material things, so much seeking “all and immediately,” so spellbound by a thousand things, that then (and only “then”, after
some event that shakes us) we discover that they are all really superfluous …
• Today it is up to us to give voice to the prayer of the Master:Father, hallowed be your name…
Some Questions
Let us use this occasion to examine our way of praying:
• What does praying mean for me: An obligation? A pause in the search of myself?
Presenting God with a list of requests? A pause in the company of the Father? A simple
and trusting dialogue with the One who loves me?
• How much time do I give
to prayer: some every day?
Or once a
week or once a month?
Occasionally? Systematically? Do I wait until I “feel the need” to pray?
• What is the
starting point of my
prayer: is it the Word of God? Is it the saint or the liturgical feast of the
day? Is it devotion to our Lady? Is it an illustration or icon? Is it the events of my life or those of the
history of the world?
• Whom do I meet when I pray: looking deep into myself, when I
pray do I speak to one whom I feel to be a judge or to
a friend? Do I
feel Him to be an “equal” or someone who is “holy,”
infinite or unattainable? Is He near to me or far and indifferent? Is He my Father or my master? Does He care for me or “is He busy with His own
affairs”?
• How
do I pray: do I pray
a little mechanically, using set formulae? Do I pray
using passages from the Psalms or other Biblical texts? Liturgical
texts? Do I choose to pray spontaneously? Do I look for
texts using beautiful words or do I prefer to repeat a short phrase? How do I use “the Lord’s prayer”? Do I more often find myself invoking
God for some need or to praise Him in the liturgy or to contemplate Him in silence? Am
I able to pray while I am working or in any place or only when I am in church?
Am I able to make liturgical prayer my own? What place does the Mother of God have in my
prayer?
A Key to the Reading
This
passage presents prayer as one of the fundamental requirements and a key point
in the life of a disciple of Jesus and of the community of disciples.
vv. 1-4: Jesus, like other great religious masters of his
time, teaches his followers a prayer that will define them: the “Our
Father”.
• Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished one of his disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray”: Jesus
goes aside to pray. In Luke’s Gospel he does this often (5: 16), above all
just before important events: before choosing the Twelve (6: 12-13), before soliciting Peter’s confession of faith (9: 18-20),
before the transfiguration (9:28-29) and, finally, before the passion (22:
40-45).
As
Jesus prays, he arouses
in his disciples the desire
to pray like him. Clearly, it is a prayer that shows itself externally in a very special way and that
certainly affects his preaching. The disciples understand that such a prayer is
quite different from that taught by other spiritual masters in Israel or
even by the precursor of Jesus. That is why they ask him to
teach them to pray. Thus, the prayer that Jesus passes on to his disciples
becomes the characteristic expression of their ideal and identity, of their way
of relating to God and among themselves.
• Father: The first thing that Jesus teaches on prayer is
to call God “Father”. Matthew, unlike Luke, does not add the adjective “our”, stressing less the community aspect of the
Christian prayer. On the other hand, the fact of invoking the Father, constitutes the best adhesive element of the
community of disciples.
For a
Jew of the first century, relationship with one’s
father was one of intimacy, but also a recognition of the father’s authority
over every member of the family. This is reflected in the Christian custom of
calling God “Father”, whereas there is no certain
evidence that the Jews of the time used to call God with the intimate term of “abba”. This term is none other than the emphatic form of the
Aramaic “ ’ab”, the familiar and respectful term used for earthly
fathers.
The
fact that Jesus used to turn to God and called him abba, shows the
new kind of relationship that He,
and therefore his disciples, establish with God: a relationship of closeness,
familiarity, and trust.
In the classical scheme of
Biblical prayer, the first part of
the “our Father” deals
directly with God, whereas the second part refers to the needs of humankind in its earthly
existence.
• Father, hallowed be your name: in the message of the
prophets of Israel, it is God who “sanctifies His own Name” (that is, himself: “the name is the person”)
intervening
with power in human history, notwithstanding that Israel and the other peoples
have dishonored Him.. In Ezekiel we read: “But
when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that men said of them, 'These are the people of the Lord, and yet they had to go out of
his land.' But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel caused
to be profaned among the nations to which they came. "Therefore, say to
the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not
for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of
my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And
I will vindicate the holiness
of my great name,
which has been profaned among the
nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations will know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God,
when through you I vindicate my holiness
before their eyes. For I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your
own land.” (36:
20- 24). On the same subject we may also read: Dt 32: 51; Is 29: 22; Ez 28: 22. 25).
The subject of the verb “to hallow”,
in Lk 11: 2, is God
Himself: we are faced with a “theological passive”.
This means
that the first petition of
this prayer does not concern human beings and their unquestionable duty to honor and respect
God, but God the Father Himself who must make Himself known as such to all. Thus, we petition God to reveal Himself in His
sovereign greatness: this is an invocation with eschatological connotations,
closely connected with the following
petition.
• Your Kingdom come: the great event proclaimed by Jesus is the
definitive coming of the Kingdom of God among us:
“Be sure
of this: the kingdom of God is very near” (Lk 10:
11; cfr also Mt 10: 7). The prayer of Jesus and of the Christian,
then, is in close harmony with this proclamation. Asking in this prayer that
this Kingdom be ever more visibly present, has, in fact, two effects: the
person praying has to come face to face with the eschatological design of God, but also
with the obligation of a radical willingness to serve His will
of salvation. Thus, if it is true
that we may
and must present our needs to God the Father, it is also true that
Christian prayer never has man and woman for
its end, it is never a
selfish petition, but its ultimate
end is to glorify God, implore his full
closeness, his complete manifestation: “Set
your hearts on his kingdom, and these other
things will be given you as well” (Lk 12:
31).
• Give us this day our daily bread: we have come to the
second part of the Lord’s prayer.
The
person praying has now put into place the correct and intimate relationship
with God, and now lives in the logic of closeness to God who is Father and
his/her petitions flow from this way of life.
In Jesus’ time as
in ours
(almost!), bread is the most
necessary food, the primary nourishment.
In this case, however, “bread” stands
for food in
general and, more, all kinds of material needs of the disciples.
The English term ”bread” is a
translation of the Greek “epiousion”, found
also in Matthew but not in any other
Greek biblical or profane text. This makes it difficult to give a really reliable version, so much so that we are
constrained to translate it
according to the context.
What is
clear, however, is that the disciple who is praying in this way, is aware of
not having much material security for the future, not even for his/her daily food: he/she has really “left everything behind” to follow
Christ (cfr Lk 5: 11). Here we are dealing with a situation
characteristic of the early generations of Christians. This is not to say that
the prayer for “bread” may not be very useful for Christians of
today: we are all called to receive all things from Providence, as a
free gift from God, even if these things come from the labor of our hands. The Eucharistic offertory reminds us of
this all the time: we offer
to God that which we know well we have received from Him so that
we may receive it back from His hands. This also means that the Christian of every age must not be
preoccupied with his/her material situation, because the Father will take care of him/: “That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life
and what you are to eat, nor about your body
and how you are to clothe it. For
life means more than food, and the body more than clothing” (Lk 12: 22-23).
• Forgive us our
sins, for we ourselves
forgive each one
who is in debt to us:
The Christian, immersed in the salvation
given by the Father with the coming of His kingdom, know that all his/her sins are
already forgiven. This places
him/her in the condition and
obligation of having to forgive others, thus allowing God to
render definitive the pardon of the Christian capable of pardoning (cfr Mt 18: 23-35).
• We are always hovering between the kingdom “already” present and
kingdom “not yet”
attained. A Christian who
behaved contrary to the salvation already received from
God in Christ, renders useless the forgiveness he/she has already received.
That is why Luke says: “for we ourselves forgive”:
Luke does not wish to place us humans on the same level as God, but only to make
us aware that we can frustrate the saving work of God, within which the Father
has willed to include us as an active element, to extend His every free pardon
to all.
vv.
5-8: more than a parable, this is a similitude, because it illustrates a
typical behavior that arouses in
listeners a univocal and
spontaneous reply. In this case, it would be difficult
to find anyone who would spontaneously reply “no one!” to the question
“Which of you… ?” (v. 5)
Thus, this passage wishes to show us how God acts through the filter of
human behavior, which is a poor copy
of the behavior of the Father.
• The scene takes
place in a Palestinian situation.
Usually, anyone going on a journey would start at sunset in order to avoid
the very high temperatures of
daytime. In Palestinian houses at that
time, there was only one room and the whole family used it for all the
activities during the day as well as for sleeping at night by just spreading
straw mats on the floor.
The
request of the man who suddenly has to receive an unexpected guest in the
middle of the night, reflects a typical sense of hospitality in ancient
peoples, and the explanation of the request for
“three loaves” (v. 5) is that this was the normal meal for an
adult.
The man
who has recourse to his friend at night is the image of a disciple of Christ,
called to pray to God always
and everywhere, full of trust that he/she will be heard, not because he/she has worn Him
out, but because He is a merciful Father
who is faithful to His promises. Thus the parable shows us how a disciple should pray the “our Father”:
with complete trust in God, loving and just Father, a trust that goes even to cheekiness, that is to “disturbing Him” at any time and to
insist with Him in every way, certain of being answered.
Prayer,
as a basic attitude of every Christian who wishes to really be a disciple of
Jesus, is well
expressed by the apostle Paul: «Pray always, in all things give
thanks; this indeed is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you» (1Ts 5: 17-18)
; «Pray all the time, asking for
what you need, praying in the Spirit on
every possible occasion. Never get tired of staying awake to pray for all the
saints» (Ef 6: 18).
vv.
9-13: the last part of our Gospel is that properly called didactic. It resumes
the theme of the previous verses, emphasizing the trust that must
characterize Christian prayer, founded on the solid rock
of faith. It is the faith of the praying person that opens wide the doors of the Father’s heart, and it is the very identity of
the Father who loves to carry in his
arms his children and to console
them with the tenderness of a mother (cfr Is
66: 12-13) that which must nourish the faith of
Christians.
• God is a Father who loves to receive requests from his children,
because this shows that they put their trust in
Him, for to ask they have
to approach Him with open hearts, for asking urges them to look at His kind and loving face, for by asking
(even indirectly) they show that they believe that He is really the Lord of
history and of the world, and, above
all, because their asking allows Him to show openly His delicate, attentive and free love, solely directed for the good of
His children. What displeases the Father is not the insistence or indiscretion
of His children in asking, but that they do not ask sufficiently, remaining
silent and almost indifferent to Him, that they stay away with a thousand respectful excuses, such as “He already
knows everything”, etc. God is certainly a Father who provides all thing and takes
care of the daily life
of His children, but, at the same time, He also knows what is best for them,
even better than they do. That is why He pours out on Christians so many good things
and, above all, the gift par excellence: the Spirit, the only
truly indispensable gift for their life, the gift who, if allowed to act, will make them authentic children in the Son.
A Time of Prayer: Psalm 104
To the merciful and provident God, who created the marvelous harmony of the cosmos and who
placed in it humankind as His “vicar”, let us sing the
psalm:
Bless
Yahweh, my soul, Yahweh, my God, how great you are! Clothed in majesty and
splendour, wearing the light as a robe!
You
stretch out the
heavens like a tent, build your
palace on the waters above, making the clouds your chariot, gliding on the wings of the wind, appointing the winds
your messengers, flames of fire your servants.
You fixed the earth on
its foundations, for ever and ever it shall not be shaken;
you
covered it with the deep like a garment, the waters overtopping the mountains.
At your reproof
the waters fled,
at the
voice of your thunder they sped away, flowing over mountains, down valleys, to
the place you
had fixed for them; you made a limit they were not to cross,
they were not to return and
cover the earth. In the ravines you opened up
springs, running down between the mountains, supplying water for all the
wild beasts; the wild asses quench their thirst, on their banks the birds of
the air make their nests, they sing among the leaves.
From your high halls you
water the mountains, satisfying the earth with the fruit of your works: for
cattle you make the grass grow, and for people the plants they need, to bring
forth food from the earth, and wine to cheer
people's hearts, oil to make their faces glow, food to make them
sturdy of heart. The trees of Yahweh drink their fill, the cedars of Lebanon
which he sowed; there the birds build their nests, on the
highest branches the stork makes its
home; for the wild goats there are the mountains,
in the crags the coneys find refuge.
He made the moon to mark the seasons, the sun knows when
to set.
You
bring on darkness, and
night falls, when all the
forest beasts roam around; young lions
roar for their prey, asking God for their food.
The sun
rises and away
they steal, back to their lairs to lie
down, and man goes
out to work, to labor till evening falls.
How
countless are your works, Yahweh, all of them made so wisely! The earth is full
of your creatures. Then there is the sea,
with
its vast expanses teeming with countless creatures, creatures both great and
small; there ships pass to and fro, and Leviathan
whom you made to sport with. They all depend upon you, to feed them when they
need it. You provide the food
they gather, your open hand gives them their fill. Turn away your face and they
panic; take back their breath and they die and revert to dust.
Send
out your breath and life begins; you renew the face of
the earth. Glory to Yahweh forever!
May Yahweh find joy in his creatures! At his glance the
earth trembles,
at his
touch the mountains pour forth smoke. I shall sing to Yahweh all my life, make
music for my God as long as I live. May my musings be pleasing to him, for
Yahweh gives me joy.
May
sinners vanish from the earth, and the wicked exist no more! Bless Yahweh, my
soul.
Closing Prayer
Good and
holy Father, your love
makes us brothers and sisters and urges us to come together in your holy Church to celebrate with life the
mystery of communion. You call us to share the one bread, living and eternal, given to us from heaven. Help us also to know
how to break, in the love of Christ, our earthly bread, so that our bodily and
spiritual hunger may be satisfied. Amen.