Scripture Reflection, July 29: Two Essential Attitudes

Scripture Readings:
Genesis 18: 20-32
Psalm 138
Colossians 2: 12-14
Luke 11: 1-13

In this Sunday’s Gospel, we listen as Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. The version of the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke is shorter and simpler than that found in the Gospel of Matthew. It is followed by two parables that drive home the importance of persistence and boldness in the prayer of Christians. By giving his disciples this way of praying, Jesus was inviting them to live in communion with him and with one another. Through this prayer, he drew them into the very heart of his own life and mission. The Lord’s Prayer is much more than just a prayer; it embodies an entire way of life. Saint Cyprian of Carthage, a third century bishop and martyr, wrote an early commentary on this prayer. He says, “My dear friends, the Lord’s Prayer contains many great mysteries of our faith. In these few words there is great spiritual strength, for this summary of divine teaching contains all of our prayers and petitions.”In his recent book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI echoes the sentiments of Cyprian: “The meaning of the Our Father goes much further than the mere provision of a prayer text. It aims to form our being, to train us in the inner attitude of Jesus” (132). (For more extended reflections on the Lord’s Prayer, see the four-week, self-directed, online retreat).

This prayer “aims to form our inner being, to train us in the inner attitude of Jesus.” When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we enter into the world of Jesus and into the depths of his relationship with God and with the people he encountered in his life. We begin to view life, God, others, and ourselves through his eyes. Praying these words with attention involves a training in vision.

It seems to me that the Lord’s Prayer invites followers of Jesus to adopt the attitudes of commitment and of trust. We begin not with ourselves and our own needs but with a larger vision – asking that God’s name be hallowed and immersing ourselves in commitment to the coming of God’s reign. We immediately transcend our own small worlds and look at the bigger picture. As Daniel Harrington puts it, we look for “the time when all creation will acknowledge and celebrate the holiness of God” (America, July 16-23, 2007, 31). In praying for the coming of God’s kingdom, we enter into the deepest hope and driving force of Jesus’ earthly life. The proclamation of the kingdom, or reign, of God was the major focus of Jesus’ public ministry. Jesus proclaimed the nearness of God’s reign as he told his earthy and often unnerving parables. He made the reign of God present when he touched the leper, opened the eyes of the blind, strengthened the limbs of the paralyzed, and combated demonic forces that drained the life out of people. When the reign of God became present in and through Jesus, people found new life. They encountered the God of life.

The kingdom of God for which we pray is not so much a place as an activity. It has a dynamic meaning. It refers to what happens when the rule of a gracious, faithful, loving God permeates creation and human relationships. In his recent book, Benedict XVI writes, “To pray for the Kingdom of God is to say to Jesus: Let us be yours, Lord! Pervade us; gather scattered humanity in your body …” (147). The simplest and most beautiful definition of the reign of God I have ever read is given by Cardinal Walter Kasper. He refers to it simply as the sovereignty of God’s love (see Jesus the Christ, 80-81).

Jesus teaches us, then, to open our eyes wide and to ask that the sovereignty of God’s love permeate our lives and the entire world. In so doing, we commit ourselves to living as agents, as mediators, of the sovereignty of God’s love. We live in a world in which the presence of God’s love seems to be obscured in so many ways. As I opened my newspaper this morning and read about the ongoing war and suicide bombings in Iraq, the endless conflict in the Holy Land, the scandals rocking the world of sports, it made me wonder whether the sovereignty of God’s love is even a remote possibility in our world. Yet as followers of Jesus, you and I are called to be people of hope for and commitment to the coming of God’s reign. We must nourish our hope in the power of God’s love, which raised Jesus from the dead and continues to bring life out of death. And we are called to commit ourselves to making the sovereignty of God’s love present in the ways we relate to other people and the larger world. We must never underestimate the significance of even the smallest actions inspired by our commitment to make God’s love present.

The commitment that is inherent in the Lord’s Prayer is suffused with an attitude of trust. That atmosphere of trust is implied in the very word that begins this prayer, “Father.” Calling on God as “Father” points us to Jesus’ own unique relationship with the God he called “Abba.” Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, Jesus has offered us a participation in that unique relationship (see Galatians 4: 6-7). Jesus used the language of the home to address God. Scripture scholars suggest that “Abba” meant something like “my own dear father.” In his reflections on the Lord’s Prayer, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff expresses this fundamental attitude beautifully and succinctly: “The idea is that God is here a father who cares for his children, that God has a heart that is sensitive to our problems, that his eye is always upon our sufferings, and that his ear is open to our cries” (The Lord’s Prayer, 30). The God revealed by Jesus is One to whom we can come with unrestricted trust.

This same atmosphere of trust pervades the later petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. We ask for the gift of our “daily bread.” In doing so, we ask God simply and directly to give us all that we need to follow the Lord Jesus in our lives. We petition God for our concrete, earthy needs. By asking for bread for this day, we acknowledge our complete dependence upon the care and providence of God, even for the smallest things in life. We move on to petition God for mercy, at the same time pledging our own willingness to extend mercy to others. We know that we depend completely on the loving mercy of God, and we acknowledge that with honesty and with trust. We also depend upon the Lord for the grace we need to be forgiving toward those who have hurt us. And finally, we pray that God will not “subject us to the final test.” In this petition, we acknowledge our weakness in the face of trials and temptations. We cannot be faithful in our following of Jesus purely by our own strength or ability. And so with confidence we ask for the grace we need to be faithful to the One who is tenaciously faithful to us.

Commitment and trust – two attitudes that are essential for a Christian spirituality of discipleship. As we approach the table of the Eucharist this weekend, may we ask for the grace we need to follow Christ with greater fidelity. Let us commit ourselves to be agents of the sovereignty of God’s love in our world. And let us come to receive the Lord in a spirit of trust, confident that “God has a heart that is sensitive to our problems, that his eye is always upon our sufferings, and that his ear is open to our cries.”

Fr. Robin Ryan, cp