Before jumping back into our reflections on the Lord’s Prayer, I have a quick correction to make to last week’s bulletin article. I attributed a quote to St. Augustine about the Lord’s Prayer being the “most perfect of prayers” and that the petitions proposed by Jesus in this prayer express “all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired.” (CCC 2763) In fact, this quote came from another theological giant – St. Thomas Aquinas! As I went to where St. Thomas wrote this in his Summa Theologiae, he actually references St. Augustine! Nevertheless, my apologies to St. Thomas, though I have no doubt he would be flattered to be confused with St. Augustine!
The point made by St. Thomas, rooted in the thought of St. Augustine, that the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer express all we should rightly (as opposed to inordinate desires) is key to our appreciating the Lord’s Prayer. Spending time reflecting on each of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer can be a very fruitful spiritual exercise. But in the interest of space and time, I will only make a few comments in my articles for the next two weeks.
The first point I would like to reflect on comes from another teaching that Jesus offers on prayer, found later in the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 7 where Jesus says: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Mt 7:7–8) With this teaching, the Lord is inviting us to be persistent in our petitions to Him. We do not simply ask Him for something just once, we keep on asking. That continual knocking in prayer is not to be understood as a way of convincing God to give us what we want. Rather, our persistence in prayer helps to strengthen our desire for what the Lord already, in His loving Providence, desires to give us. Sometimes He seems to remain inattentive to our petitions when we pray, but that silence is a preparation that our hearts need so that we can receive His gifts in the way that is best suited to our well-being, and ultimately, our salvation.
Now, as this relates to the Lord’s Prayer, since the petitions proposed by Jesus are the perfect set of petitions, this prayer should be one of the go-to ways by which we approach the Lord. For sure, this means praying the entire prayer with faith, but we can also take individual petitions from the Lord’s Prayer and use them as a prayer in themselves, repeating them over and over, like a person knocking on the door.
Let me give you an example of what this might look like. Perhaps we are praying that the Lord will bring an end to a difficulty we have been having. Let’s say it is a bodily pain we have. Our prayer might sound something like: “Please, heal me of this affliction. Take this pain away from me.” Knowing that the Lord’ Prayer offers us those perfect petitions, we can add: “but thy will be done!” We ask, seek, and knock, but in the end, we trust in God’s will for us, which is always better than what our will desires. Perhaps being freed from our suffering is the Lord’s will. Great! But even if it is not, we know that the Lord, in permitting our suffering, has something even greater in store for us through His Providence. How do we know this? Listen to a few verses later in Matthew 7: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Mt 7:11) Remember that we always begin the Lord’s Prayer with the words: “Our Father.” We are His beloved children, upon whom He delights to give us good things when we ask Him, good things according to His most perfect and loving will for us. So ask, seek, and knock in prayer with confidence, always concluding with that great petition of trust in the Father: “thy will be done!”
Father Alford